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RECOLLECTIONS 
OF A BUSY LIFE 



ISABELLA E. DAVIS 




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B7DREXEL BIDDLE, PUBLISHER, PHILADELPHIA 

MDC CCCIII 






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TO MY DEAR LITTLE GRANDDAUGHTERS 

JOAN AND ELIZABETH 

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED. 



MY DEARS, HOPING WHEN YOU GROW UP THAT YOU WOULD LOVE TO 

KNOW SOMETHING OF THE LIFE OF YOUR GRANDMA, HER 

WORK, HER HOME, HER TASTES AND TRAVELS, 

IT IS MY INTENTION TO TAKE YOU 

VERY CLOSE TO MY HEART. 



CONTENTS. 








Introduction, . ..... 9 


Letters from Europe : 


England, . . . . . . .17 


France, 










20 


Germany, . 










23 


Holland, 










27 


Scotland, . 










32 


Ireland, 










38 


Address — Work for Arbor Day, 






45 


A Trip to Bermuda and the West Indies : 








Bermuda, ..... 






49 


Barbados, . 










52 


St. Lucie, . 










55 


Martinique, 










57 


Dominica, 










58 


Guadaloupe, 










59 


Antigua, . 










60 


St. Kitts, . 










61 


Santa Cruz, 










63 


Porto Rico, 










64 


St. Thomas, 










69 


Annual Address at Trenton, N. 


J., . . 






71 


Address, .... 








75 


Address — Suggestions for Mothers, . . . . 


84 


Appeal to the Editors of t 


he St 


ate of Nev 


v Jers 


ey> , 


93 



8 



Contents. 



Letters from the United States 
Ohio, 
Tennessee, 
Louisiana, 
Texas, * . 
California, . 
Colorado, . 



94 
99 
100 
103 
109 
124 



INTRODUCTION. 



I was born in the year 1842 on the banks of the 
Delaware river in an old-fashioned farmhouse sit- 
ting high on a cliff overlooking this beautiful river, 
where I could watch the vessels from my bedroom 
windows as they passed. 

The house was covered with vines of every hue 
and color, and being much alone, my mother having 
died when I was a baby, I spent the most of my 
childhood with my nurse, the cowboys, and the pets 
on the farm and driving with my dear father. 

Daily we took the cows down to the river for 
water, and one was named Suky, my pet, who would 
come and lie down beside me, as I sat on a little 
bench, made between willow trees, and I used to 
make whistles from the bark and play little airs with 
them — " Mocking Bird" was my favorite. I spent 
much of my time on this seat watching the farmers 
load and unload their produce on my father's wharf. 

And occasionally a raftsman would come down 
with his raft and tie for the night, and I would get 
him hot coffee from the house, and he would give 
me maple sugar in return. 

Now one day my father went to Philadelphia to 



10 Introduction. 

buy seeds, and passing through the market he saw 
a little colored girl crouching behind a market stall 
crying. He asked her what was the matter and 
why she was there, and she told him she had been 
brought from Virginia by a sea captain who put her 
ashore for crying. Father brought her home with 
him and she lived with us for many years. 

I wish here to tell you that my father was a 
Whig or Abolitionist in politics and many times 
helped colored slaves from the South to reach their 
freedom by what was at that time called " Under- 
ground Railroading." 

Now this girl years later became my nurse and 
her name was Dinah; to her I owe perhaps more 
than I can ever tell ; she it was who taught me right 
from wrong, to be kind to all animals, and many is 
the dinner we prepared for Suky when she came in 
from her bath. 

Under the lilacs, we had a blue birds home 
and she taught me to feed them from the window 
sill, and I used to sit and watch them ferry the food 
across to their young. I was a very happy little 
girl. I loved everybody and everybody loved me, 
and no sorrow ever reached me that Dinah could 
prevent. 

Now sometimes she would take me fishing ; 
with our lunch basket we would get in our boat and 
go up the creek, under a canopy of beautiful trees, 
and overhanging the creek were huckleberry trees 
from which I gathered the berries, and one day I dis- 
obeyed in standing up in the boat shaking the hazel- 



Introduction. 11 

nuts from the limbs and fell into the water and 
Dinah had to get me out. 

Now when we reached the spring we would get 
out of the boat and lean over the creek and watch 
the beautiful speckled trout glide in and out. There 
were no cars to come that way, in those days, with 
their rumbling noises, and so we had fish, squirrels 
and birds in profusion, and though I always started 
with my fishing tackle, Dinah always thought it was 
so much more fun for the fish and so much more 
pleasure for me, if I would watch them from the 
bank, instead of tearing their pretty gills with my 
hook and leaving them to suffer. 

Father used to say I had a very sweet voice, and 
sometimes I used to be called down to sing for 
friends in the big parlor. Now my favorites were 
44 Robin Adair," " John Anderson my Joe John " 
and 44 Old Black Joe." Now when we went back to 
our study Dinah always rated my voice by the peo- 
ple I made cry. 

It so happened that on one of these evenings 
I met a lady who asked me to sing at her Charity 
Concert for the benefit of a little girl in India she 
was educating. I was delighted and accepted, and 
all at once I had visions of being what I hoped 
would be a second Jenny Lind, whom I had previ- 
ously heard. 

I had a sweet little blue and white silk dress 
made, low neck and short sleeves, my hair I wore in 
four long curls that reached my waist, a little gold 
chain and locket, and with my program in my hand, 



12 Introduction. 

with my name printed on it, we started for the con- 
cert. 

We arrived and Dinah gave me the finishing 
touches and I was called. As I stood by the chan- 
cel railing, I looked up and saw a beautiful chande- 
lier, and then all the people. The accompanist 
gave me the key and I bowed. He gave it again 
and I bowed, but not one note could I sing; then I 
started and ran until I reached Dinah who took me 
home, undressed me and put me to bed, with this 
consoling thought, " Now, never mind, honey; dis 
is the very last time we ever go up there to amuse 
dem people." 

Christmas Day at home ; it is the day before 
Christmas and there is a stir in the house; the 
brassesare being cleaned, the greens are being hung, 
and an odor of good things pervades the house, and 
you know that Christmas is coming. 

The lights are out and we are all put to bed, 
and in the morning we are all dressed for this beau- 
tiful day; the table is set in the dining room for 
from thirty to forty persons ; bright fires are burn- 
ing on all the hearths. 

In one corner of the kitchen a table, upon 
which are fruits, mince pies, doughnuts in abundance ; 
these are to be given away to each poor person who 
comes to the house that day. 

No presents being allowed to be given by 
grandfather to any person who had money, or by 
we children to each other, for fear that in after 
years we might be tempted to give that which we 



Introduction. 13 

could not afford, and spend money which we might 
later need. 

Everything being ready, we begin to receive 
the guests, our grandma, uncles and aunts, and all 
our little cousins, and then the fun begins. 

The old people have the parlor, and we children 
play " Hot pot of blue beans," " Pussy wants a cor- 
ner," and " tag;" and running around through the 
house we would frequently reach the kitchen, and 
our progress would shake the corn down from the 
ceiling where it hung suspended from the rafters, 
causing screams of laughter from the little ones. 

Now we would all be called in and sat down for 
a few minutes to "get good," and I used to think 
if that was what mothers were for, I was glad that I 
did not have any. 

When the sun went down the good-byes were 
said, and after shaking hands with the dear friends, 
they went to their homes and Christmas was ended. 

Bidding good-bye to all my old friends at the 
farm, I am sent by my father at the age of twelve 
years to Miss West's Academy in Burlington, 
N. J., where I was most fortunate in meeting Miss 
Mary Simonson, who proved to be a lifelong friend, 
who always taught me how to be truly happy ; it was 
in never losing the opportunity to help any friend 
when the opportunity arose. 

I graduated at this school on my sixteenth 
birthday, when I early married and went to Phila- 
delphia to live. Although I had a beautiful home I 
was never entirely happy, as I never could accustom 



14 Introduction. 

myself to the exceeding extravagance of the rich 
and the miserable homes of the poor. 

It was soon now that I became interested in the 
Civil War, and took an active interest in what was 
called the Volunteer Refreshment Saloon, where 
soldiers were received on their way South and rested 
and refreshed, the return cars bringing back to us 
the wounded, the dying and the dead. 

As young as I was then, I held hands with the 
dying soldiers, who thought it was their mother ; it 
was here I learned all the horrors of war, which 
made me ever afterwards a great advocate of set- 
tling disputes by arbitration, even though a nation 
might lose financially and gain in glory. 

It was here that I was invited by Bishop Simp- 
son to preside at a table at the Sanitary Fair which 
made one million of dollars for the benefit of the 
sick and wounded of this war. 

It was about twenty years after this time, or a 
little later, that your dear grandfather purchased 
Banksmere at Riverton, N. J., on the banks of the 
same river on which I was born ; this was to my 
great delight, where I became much interested in 
forestry ; it was here I formed and was elected 
President of the New Jersey Forestry Association, 
which was the result of reform Forestry legislation 
which I was instrumental in having passed by the 
New Jersey Legislature. I gave much time to this 
work. I will leave you some copies of some ad- 
dresses that grandma made at different meetings 
for interesting others in this work. 



Introduction. 15 

It was at this time that I began receiving many 
gifts from the experimental Government Farms here 
and in Canada, which was my pleasure to develop 
into the best specimens of their kind. 

Grandfather taking objection to my experi- 
ments, purchased me two large farms, called Road- 
side and Holly Home, near Burlington, N. J., where 
all my experimental work was removed to. 

From this time it was my pleasure to develop 
the resources of these farms, upon which there lived 
two German brothers, who brought their wives 
from Germany ; they kept many cows, pigs, chickens, 
ducks, geese and turkeys ; through the farms ran a 
large creek, filled with fish and edged with nut trees, 
walnuts, chestnuts, shellbarks and hazelnuts. 

From my experiments on these farms, I became 
much interested in horticultural and agricultural 
work. About this time I made an extensive trip 
through England, France, Switzerland, Germany, 
Holland, Scotland and Ireland with both your 
mothers, where we were beautifully entertained by 
the leading Horticultural Societies of the cities and 
towns which we visited. About this time I also 
visited Bermuda and Porto Rico and California, 
from which points letters are also attached. 

On this trip I sent letters back, giving you a 
full description of this trip, and some little talks I 
gave for different charitable purposes, which I have 
preserved for your instruction, thinking you would 
like to know a little of what your grandma was in- 
terested in. 



ENGLAND. 



London. 

I want to write you something of what is going 
on this side of the ocean. After parting with our 
steamer, the last link broken between us and our 
home, we passed into the chilly atmosphere of 
Liverpool ; after getting fixed for the night I heard 
the sweet voices of the great English salvation army 
under my window sing our sweet hymns, and you 
were made to feel at once that though divided by 
the great ocean we were yet one people. 

We proceeded at once to London by way of 
midland through Derbyshire to see the great oaks 
that had never been trimmed, large enough to live 
in entirely protected from the storms, with grounds 
underneath large enough for a garden. Much 
pleased with London — a great city, sewerage, light- 
ing, drainage most complete, ambulances stationed 
all along at intervals in connection with the hospi- 
tals. We were most fortunate in being invited to 
lunch at the home of a friend near the entrance to 
Hyde Park to see the drilling of the guard, after 
which they proceeded to the station to escort the 
Queen and her family in to the Palace. During the 



18 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

parades she sat near her daughter Beatrice ; she is 
rather short and stout, wore a black silk dress, with 
a little white chiffon bonnet, and sat in a little chair 
upon springs which made her appear to be bowing 
to every one, but I am sorry to say when I saw her 
she was crying. So great was the rush there was a 
special order issued that no one should be disturbed 
sleeping on the streets that night. In Guy's Hos- 
pital alone they admitted 986 people injured during 
the illumination and parade. 

The English gentlemen are fine, but the ladies 
are almost insane on the subject of tea drinking, 
the effects of which you see in their faces, and you 
do not find here that deep down devotion to royalty 
that one expects in this apparently well-governed 
city, which I suppose can be best explained when we 
are told there are thousands who go to bed each 
night hungry. 

It is very pretty to watch from my window the 
different faces of the people which at this time 
represent almost every nation on the globe, the 
independent manner in which each one lives out his 
own life independent of the other ; for instance, if 
a person wishes to drown himself in the Thames he 
will lie there until seven in the evening or six in the 
morning, when there will be a police boat sent out 
for the purpose of gathering up the bodies. 

They have beautiful parks here, among which 
I mention particularly Chew's Gardens, at one time 
the home of George the Third. Such roses, often 
reaching as high as the third story windows, and I 



Letter from England. 19 

much admire the grass ; instead of our constant cut- 
ting, you have here nature undisturbed; and all 
through the grass one sees the field flowers. 

And now one word about the farm life, the pic- 
turesque stone house, the larger barn, the plain 
cooking, delicious stewed fruits, doing without des- 
serts, cold meats, and we can readily understand 
how the wife is able to mount this pretty little 
wagon and market the produce of their farm; no 
commission men here; the husband at home running 
the farm until they are rich enough to hire a 
farmer. 

Fields rarely broken for vegetables, land farmed 
right up to the railroad tracks, and should it incline 
too much it is sown in seed turnip, mustard or 
buckwheat. Grass much richer and heavier than 
ours, and I have noticed no blight on any fruit trees 
anywhere, and yet I am told they do not spray 
them. 

Oh, I wonder whether we exactly appreciate the 
advantages of our beloved country, or what indi- 
vidually we could make it, both for ourselves and 
those that shall follow after us, by watching more 
closely our beautiful water courses, by compelling 
our railroad companies to use the spark extin- 
guisher that our car rides should pass through 
beautiful shade trees. 

I. E. Davis. 



FRANCE. 



Paris, July 12, 1897. 
Beautiful Paris, so clean with its beautiful 
river Seine running through it, water emerald 
green, beautiful little steamboats one cent a ride ; 
on the front deck you will see a little flower market, 
potted plants and strawberries and cut flowers for 
sale, which adds so much to the beauty of this 
river ; the little boats chained to the shore, in which 
the poor come to wash, for water is at a premium 
here. Although I have drank it all the time, I have 
been perfectly well. The beauty of this town is 
largely due to its parks, fountains, statuary which 
are exquisite, its art exhibitions all being free, and 
open at all times to young artists. Near the Louvre 
and Tuilleries are the exhibition buildings, which 
are now being modernized out of some court build- 
ings. The home life in Paris is not cheerful, too 
much before the public, not enough of good home 
cooking for the poor, too much cheap bread and 
wine, the effects plainly seen both in mind and body. 
A source of large revenue to this country is the 
growing of sugar-beets in all unused land, it being 
subsidized by the government. The American 



Letter from France. 21 

Colony is one of the prettiest in Paris. In passing 
through the city, on all the most magnificent build- 
ings you will see the letter N. for Napoleon — no 
wonder this people tire of such extravagance ; for 
as we ascertained, the poor were obliged to work 
three days in a week on these buildings free. 

The most beautiful forests here are St. Cloud 
and Fontainbleau ; the former is used for the public, 
the latter a hunting ground ; the trees are protected 
by a covering of brush on the trunk; the elms here 
are stately, and as you enter the forest there are 
rose bushes trained through wire oval tables which 
gives one the impression they have been placed 
there. 

We leave here and go to Geneva and Lucerne 
on the lake, the back of which is the Alps and from 
which you can easily see the patches of snow and 
ice on the top of Mt. Blanc. It seems almost im- 
possible to understand this mountain district ; here 
in Lucerne, the picking of cherries at the base, the 
next in order are the vegetables, then follow the 
grain ; the southern slopes are used for the cows, 
which one can always locate by their bells. 

The town itself begins at the lake, the first 
street and each following being terraced. It is a 
lovely city, so peaceful and calm, and every one so 
happy; no idleness here, everybody works, rich and 
poor; by seven o'clock, looking out of your win- 
dow, you see all the little children going to school. 

The great industry here is growing the grapes, 
and the carving of pear wood and the making of 



22 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

toys. The peasant dress is very pretty, and well 
becomes the sweet innocent faces of these Swiss 
girls ; the men, too, are most kind in their families. 

We have served at all times a most delicious 
honey which is gathered on this mountain, where 
there are wild flowers, and being cheap, it is largely 
used. 

The guests of our hotel were invited this morn- 
ing to witness a race of mosquito boats on the 
lake, between the English and Americans, and 
music by a Hungarian band. Need I tell you the 
Americans won? One can hardly describe the en- 
thusiasm which a few American flags far from home 
can inspire. 

I. E. Davis. 



GERMANY. 



Dresden, July 20, 1897. 
I wish every member of the New Jersey Forestry 
Association and those yet to be, could see the Black 
Forest of Germany; one fairly enters the country 
about Baden-Baden, on all sides rise the hills of this 
forest, dark and dense to their summits with pine 
woods, the air laden with perfume of acacias ; not a 
bird visible throughout this wooded district. The 
absence of bird life is very noticeable. Never will 
I forget that long lonely ride, hour after hour, and 
still the woods never ceased. Ferns and bracken grew 
in a profusion of loveliest and purest green ; wild 
flowers abounded; paths ran in all directions, one 
knew not whither. To stand a while and listen, 
within these woods, is to realize the intensity of 
silence; no chirping of birds, mate answering to 
mate — no ring of the woodman's axe — utter solitude; 
in one sense of the word refreshing and restoring 
to mind and body and spirit. Plums grow in the 
middle of the road, and grapes trail their leaves 
and fruit over the walls of the cottages up to the 
roofs. In many of the cottages the ground floor 
was turned into a stable for animals. Here and 



24 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

there a pretty laughing face peeped inquisitively 
from a latticed window, set off by a framework of 
pretty green leaves. 

The few children in the roads, all with naked 
feet, ran away quickly, but would soon return and 
make friends when given a small coin. In the valley, 
on the borders of a little stream, great saw mills are 
at work, and it is pleasant to enter these mills and 
see the primitive machinery at work, and enjoy the 
pine scent from the sawdust thrown out. 

And then an old castle appears worth inspec- 
tion, half court-yard, half garden, with old-fash- 
ioned flowers, forming a pretty entrance to the 
gate, and the armor, polished floors, the stained 
glass windows, the curiosities ending with the an- 
cient pictures of an oratory. 

As usual, when a number of Germans are 
assembled, conversation becomes animated and 
voices loud. The German woman knows little of 
that excellent thing in their sex, a sweet voice, and 
the men seem to chime in with their bass. 

But the honey of this forest is delicious. Soon 
one grows to love the pines, and to miss them where 
they are not. After a day or two in a Black Forest 
town, you long for the woods. We were shown 
some of the mysteries of wood carving; men and 
boys were turning, chiseling, and cutting out with 
delicate tools and wonderful neatness. 

It was curious to watch a block of wood assume 
shape under the skilful hands, for instance, an 
angel's wing or an eagle with outstretched pinions. 



Letter from Germany. 25 

Now little farms begin to appear, and as our 
train passes on, a few country people pass us in 
their peasant costumes, and with uplifted hats, 
appear to wish us God-speed, in a way which would 
impress you that they were at peace with all man- 
kind. 

Every one who visits the Black Forest should 
visit Freiburg. The view from the Schwarzerald 
Hotel is enough to tempt any one to linger, the 
waterfall here being the most romantic in this 
forest. Below, is the town famous for its wood 
carving, clock makers, and one shop bearing the 
name, Jamy Sohne, musical chairs. 

All the way to Dresden beautiful views follow 
each other in rapid succession ; often the scenes on 
either side are so great, one is puzzled to know 
which way to look. Greedy, for fear of losing the 
least, one almost wishes the train would crawl on- 
wards. You might stand on the outer edge of your 
car, provided the guard does not come upon you 
in one of his outings, and gaze down the precipice 
below. Miles and miles of this forest cut right 
through rocks. 

One almost begins to wonder, " is this a reality 
or a dream," from which you will suddenly awaken, 
when all at once we arrive at a station where once 
was a Benedictine Monastery. It is a wonderful 
building of endless extent, with long dreary halls, 
and old-fashioned carved staircases. 

In the building now is heard the sound of 
machinery, and one is surprised on entering to see 



26 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

the endless rows of spinning jennies, the great 
number of men and women ; instead of the Black 
Forest, one would think they were in Manchester, 
so at variance with this old monastic building is the 
rattling, roaring ironwork. 

Again we take our cars with weeping skies, 
and with a suspicion that we are leaving our beauti- 
ful forest behind us, we hear our conductor call out 
Dresden. 

I. E. Davis. 

P. S. — I have been invited to visit the Ham- 
burg Exhibition in Holland International, as a dele- 
gate of the State Board of Agriculture and Horti- 
culture of New Jersey; have accepted, and thee will 
hear from me at that point. 

I. E. Davis, 
Pres. Forestry Asso. of New Jersey. 



HOLLAND. 



Amsterdam, Aug. 9, 1897. 

We arrived at Hamburg on the night of the 
third, where we were kindly received by Mr. Louis 
Ritz, of the Board of Agriculture, and escorted to 
the Exposition, which was solely devoted to Agri- 
culture and Horticulture. 

The display was similar to one of ours under 
similar conditions, the rare treat to me being the 
meeting with the people who came from the interior 
part of the country in their native costumes. The 
glittering helmeted head-dressed farmers' wives, and 
the sombre-attired farmer, with his red tasseled 
green bag of samples by his side. 

Passing on, we see the spice-laden merchant 
from Java, with his trees in full bearing, and next 
the East Indians, with rice and sweet scented barks, 
dried in the tropical summer. We pass on, and 
yonder standing is a clear-cut little wind mill, 
crushing the rye into comforting Schnapps of com- 
merce. 

And so next we come to fair Italy's display of 
grapes, that I wish each and every agriculturist of 
our State could see and study; it is the effects of 
soil on what we plant. The display consists of grape 



28 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

vines planted in the same soil, pots and variety, the 
first no grapes, second rather richer leaves, until the 
fifth pot is reached, when by the right soil (if not 
to be attained naturally, then artificially), we have 
one vine in a pot ten inches in diameter, forty-twa 
bunches of fruit, the largest bunch weighing two 
pounds. A similar display of tomatoes. 

And so we come, next in line, to Germany's 
pride, potatoes, supposed to be plantings from four 
varieties of seed from the same potatoes, first plant- 
ing from the paring of the potatoes used in the 
family, second from the sprouts already started in 
forcing beds (which are always the earliest), third 
from second size, fourth the finest to be had of its 
kind ; singular to relate those from the parings are 
as fine as the best. 

The display of apples here is most poor, and I 
wish I could say some word to open up a market 
for ours. Last year they were left ungathered by 
our farmers because they could not be marketed to* 
profit by the owners. A boy coming home from 
Boston brought his mother a barrel of apples ; she 
exhibited them at a fair, after which they were sold 
for the Seamen's Hospital and brought ten dollars. 
As the freight from New York to Hamburg is about 
seventy-five cents a barrel, I will leave this thought 
with our young agriculturist. 

And now to Holland, the land I love ; mile 
upon mile of pasture, dotted with countless numbers 
of Holland's pride, its beautiful oxen, black and 
white, black and white to the thousandth ; indeed,, 



Letter from Holland. 29 

all animated nature is black and white, the farmer's 
black clothes are relieved by his whitened wooden 
-shoes and spotless white shirt; his dog, cows, goats, 
chickens, his pigs, everything seems to join in this 
symphony. 

The very name brings thoughts of kindred 
associations and of ancient history ; if I remember 
rightly, it was here the union of the seven states 
originated, and here one can trace the beginning of 
many of our marked traits of to-day. One can see 
things here best by water, the natural element of 
the country ; it is free, cheap and picturesque. The 
elm-bordered canals of her cities, where many of 
her streets are waterways ; no sound of rattling 
wheels are heard, but where the gardener plies his 
craft, laden with celery, pale green lettuce and beau- 
tiful carrots, a sight to remember. And farther up 
you see the lesser boats squeezing and creeping so 
quietly betwixt their taller neighbors, with fragrant 
hay, and wood from the Black Forest. 

Pretty as this scene is we will not linger here, 
but away to the hyacinth and tulip farm, where one 
sees that shrewd business sense so characteristically 
joined with the simple habits of this people, where 
owner and operator divide the result of the year's 
working in strictly agreed proportions. Where the 
workman and owner lives, each in homes erected at 
the expense of the Capitol, in a garden laid out and 
maintained at common expense, with band, concert, 
cafe, a very pleasure to look upon, and a solution 
not to be overlooked by a visitor, of one of the 



30 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

most difficult questions of the coming age. No 
country in the world could be so unlike our own. 
Here in Amsterdam, in this hotel where I am now 
stopping, whose corridor is tiled and wainscoated 
with white marble and frescoed walls we might well 
envy, concealed behind two large black walnut doors, 
are six linen bags of feed for the coach horses for 
one day. 

Day after day one may travel where appliances 
are used as primitive as those with which the ark 
was built ; you are ferried across by a man to the 
other side by pulling on a rope on the end of one's 
boat ; the farmer beating his grain without even a 
flail; and yet these people, on this barren sand floor, 
have no natural products, no coal or iron, no cop- 
per, stone, wood, few natural rivers, and those a 
continued terror to her, no water power, no natural 
soil ! Nature seems to have created it out of the 
leavings of other lands, a wilderness of swamps, 
but man has made it a country and chained the 
waters, a garden of Eden, and its people are clothed 
and housed equal to our own. The people can and 
do earn an ample competence without worry, but 
will their rosy-cheeked children in like manner, by 
like frugality, earn a like result? 

To us with our boundless scope, who get so 
worried over results, Holland offers a cheering ex- 
ample ; but one must see them to judge. They have 
well filled galleries in Amsterdam, beautiful music, 
sweet, pretty parks, and not even the impulsive 
Frenchman can compare with the Hollanders. 



Letter from Holland. 31 

When the work of the day is over you will see and 
hear them sing and dance as though the world had 
no past of toil or future of care, and far in the 
night one can hear the social laugh, not the boister- 
ous noises of the inebriate, but pure overflowing of 
hearty happiness. 

I. E. Davis. 



SCOTLAND. 



Edinburgh, Aug. 18, 1897. 

We leave by steamer Rotterdam for Edinburgh 
by way of the North Sea, and sitting here on the 
deck of this steamer, I understand now as I never 
did before how the London people are fed; all 
along this beautiful harbor are freighters from 
London, and squeezed in beside them are the little 
market boats from Holland, laden with cheese, but- 
ter, poultry, condensed milk. 

We arrived in Edinburgh just in the gray of the 
morning and proceeded at once to our hotel, the 
Waverly, one of a series to be found running 
through Scotland and Ireland, endowed by the late 
Robert Cranston, which are now declaring large 
dividends for their originators, being determined 
that the weary traveler should find a resting place free 
from the temptation of strong drink. The maids 
here say they can always tell an American lady, as they 
first order a fire then ice-water. 

I want to tell all the good friends at home, who 
sometimes may weary in the good work, be not dis- 
couraged ; all over the land one sees in letters of 
gold the beautiful sign-boards of the womens' and 



Letter from Scotland. 33 

mens' Christian Associations. One building in 
Dublin alone cost one hundred thousand dollars. 
I visited here, Forthbridge, the place, if you remem- 
ber, where the bridge with its carload of living 
freight went down and never after was heard from, 
and as I gazed upon the new one I wished the archi- 
tect who modeled our bridge across the Delaware 
could have had my place and seen high-masted boats 
with sails unfurled, with swift steamers passing in 
and out, merely observing the common law of keep- 
ing to the right. On the top of this bridge, trains 
passing, no death trap but safe as a country road. 

From here we drove to Roslyn by way of the 
Queen's Drive, and how I wish the dear friends at 
home, who believe in tree-planting by birds, and 
their care to chance, could see this road, edged with 
its stately rows of elms. 

I was invited by my friend, Mrs. Cranston, to 
accompany her on a mission of mercy, and before 
leaving the clothes with the poor, it is the law of the 
city that they shall be stamped so they cannot be 
exchanged for whiskey, as the Scotch highland poor 
are so fond of this drink, and not being properly 
fed, do not seem strong enough to resist the tempta- 
tion. With a guide and a carriage, and woe betide 
the person who from motives of economy or love 
of walking attempts going on foot, for it is an 
experience which will last a lifetime ; the moment 
one stops, they are surrounded by a crowd of women 
and children, who do not ask for alms, but simply 
demand them. 



34 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

Passing through a doorway in which was hung 
a curtain, we came upon a small room with rough- 
hewn walls, whitewashed and fairly clean, with 
smoke going out through a hole cut in the cliff 
over the door, no window, a dresser on which were 
some old cooking utensils and broken crockery ; in 
one corner of this room was a bed on the floor, 
partitioned off by a rope from the little children; 
lying there was the poor father dead, partially cov- 
ered with an old blanket ; in the corner at the wash- 
tub was the mother. I said to her, " Dear woman, 
how much seems required of thee." She answered, 
41 Yes, you know we cannot all be giving up at the 
same time" Coming out we saw a shed used for a 
donkey and the pigs, when they chose to come in. 
How they lived on this hillside, covered as it is 
principally by the leaves of the prickly pear, is hard 
to understand, and their leanness shows that their 
existence is a precarious one. 

With all the dirt there is a marvelous look of 
health among these people ; the men as a rule are 
tall and straight, women stern, and children simply 
swarm on every side, but are dear little sturdy beg- 
gars, strong in mind and limb, as evidenced by the 
way they kept pace with the carriage and giving 
tongue the whole time. Once in the open I drew 
a long breath, and thanked my star that I was not 
among the poor in Scotland. At best they can 
merely eke out a miserable existence, but at the 
same time are an interesting people, and unlike any 
poor I have seen in Europe. 



Letter from Scotland. 35 

And now we will pass to Ireland, the country I 
love, its people, its water, its trees and its grass ; 
no wonder its children are never done talking about 
it. I have seen more birds here than all together 
since I left home. The first sight of Dublin, from 
one's steamer, is sure to fascinate. 

The weather was bright and sun shining with a 
clear blue sky, and Dublin, said to be the " Eye of 
Ireland," is set deep in its bay, on whose sheltered 
waters at all times one can see a beautiful display of 
craft of all kinds, steam launches, fishing boats, 
pleasure yachts, row boats and steamers. 

It is the chief seat of the manufacture of pop- 
lin, glass, linens, and no one need be told of its 
breweries and distilleries ; in Dublin, one plant 
alone, the Guinness, covers fifty acres. One of the 
first objects that meets the eye as one lands, and 
touches strongly of the soil, is the Irish outside car. 

Nothing indeed can be better suited for the 
purpose of making a rapid survey of the city than 
these vehicles. The proper fares are very moderate, 
but the carmen are notorious for their romancing, 
and are not above asking an extra sixpence for their 
superior accommodations offered. The main streets 
are full of animated and interesting pictures, but 
the visitor is apt to be less pleasantly impressed 
with the slums and back alleys, into which the poorer 
class from the provinces are crowded, and many a 
woeful scene of gaunt misery confronts the passer 
by, and extorts one's sympathy. There are many 
beautiful charities in Dublin. 



36 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

But oh, how my heart goes out to those dear 
old fathers and mothers who have grown old, whose 
children are thousands of miles away, whose labor 
has been taken from them to supply untold extrava- 
gance, where, within a stone's throw, jewels are 
being guarded which, if they were sold and money 
returned to its rightful sources, would house and 
home them till the end. 

Never have I appreciated the change called 
death, the sweet messenger which will at last take 
them to their heavenly rest. We will now away to 
the gap of Dunloe ; it is a rugged mountain pass, 
and in the course one skirts the Black Lough, dear 
to all pious hearts, as the Lough into which St. 
Patrick threw the last of the Irish snakes. 

A short drive from Cork and we stop at Blar- 
ney Castle, beautifully situated among trees and 
banks, and so world-wide famous for its kissing 
stone. 

And now we leave Cork and bear down toward 
Queenstown. In all the corridors of the hotel one 
hears the subject of the sea sickness in all its vari- 
ous phases discussed ; it was largely solved for me 
by a maid. I asked her why she wasn't sea-sick, 
when she promptly answered, " Because I should be 
discharged." My friends, upon going upon a 
steamer have something to do, and if not for your- 
self, do something for the steerage. 

But oh, the sickness which is overwhelming is 
that which came to me in St. Giles' Cathedral, in 
Edinburgh, when looking up in the choir stalls I saw 



Letter from Scotland. 37 

the Highland Greys' brass band of thirty pieces ; 
a crash like thunder came through this church, and 
then the sweet melody fell upon the ear, and you 
could distinguish the sweet words of the hymn so 
familiar to us all: 

44 Lead Kindly Light, for I am far from home." 

I. E. Davis. 



IRELAND. 



on board steamship "teutonic. 

September 3, 1896. 
To My Dear Irish Friends: — 

Thinking perhaps you might like to hear some- 
thing from dear old Ireland from one just from the 
soil, I write you. I attended the National Horse 
Show. A bright, warm, sunny afternoon, there were 
on the grounds twenty thousand people, the finest 
looking and best dressed of any people I have seen 
on my tour, not excepting the "Queen's Jubilee. " 
The light and pretty toilettes of the ladies as they 
sat upon the Irish cart, did much to beautify this 
Ladies' Day. 

There were three prizes offered besides the reg- 
ular premiums, "The Hunter's," " Dublin Trades," 
and "Breeders." The horses were great; viewed 
from the Grand Stand, the gathering was immense 
and brilliant, and when the royal visitors arrived at 
three o'clock in the afternoon, there was a grand 
uprising, and the band of the Thirteenth Hussars 
played the National Anthem. 

The Duke and Duchess of York were in an 
open carriage, drawn by four superb black horses, 



Letter from Ireland. 39 

and were preceded by outriders ; the Duke wore a 
white flower in his button-hole ; kept his hat raised 
during the drive around the enclosure to the centre 
of the grand stand. The Duchess was charmingly 
gowned in a cream-colored dress, wore a bonnet 
and gloves to match, and bowed to the people con- 
tinually. 

The Lord Lieutenant and the Countess Cado- 
gan followed, and may I add here there is a feeling 
of dissatisfaction among the people, that this Lord 
and Lady could not have been chosen from among 
the Irish people. 

The jumping over the walls was fine. A parade 
followed of tandems, coaching, trotting and harness 
ponies, and was viewed by the Duke and Duchess 
from the judge's stand, and frequently applauded 
by him with as much heartiness as any one at the 
exhibition. 

This is a gala week in Dublin ; it is gaily deco- 
rated with evergreens and variegated bunting from 
one end to the other, and the heart is often warmed 
by the sight of an American flag side by side with 
your own. 

We also attended a garden party given at the 
Vice Regal Lodge by the Lord Lieutenant and 
Countess Cadogan in honor of the Duke and 
Duchess of York. There were four thousand peo- 
ple invited. The official building of the Lord Lieu- 
tenant is in Phoenix Park, the largest free park in 
the world ; and directly opposite the main thorough- 
fare may be seen the spot where Cavendish and 



40 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

Burk were murdered in May, 1882. The house is 
beautifully surrounded with flower-beds, fountains 
and mountain ash trees. 

My next visit was to the Irish Textile Exhibi- 
tion. It was held in a large hall, "On the Green," 
to encourage cottage industry. I wish you all could 
have been there ; with all our advantages we could 
not compete with this display, from the fibre to the 
finished fabric. It is said the moisture in the air 
here prevents the snapping of the threads on the 
loom, and that is why the Irish linens are the finest 
in the world. 

Next we come to the laces, which were exqui- 
site; and among the exhibitors' names I noticed 
those so dear to you all, " Little Sisters of the Poor," 
u Cross of Congal," Hillainy, Donegal. 

Now there was one exhibit in which I loved to 
linger, the cloth department of Mary O'Brien, who 
is now the most successful cloth manufacturer in 
the south of Ireland. She is eighty-two years of 
age, and presented me with her picture, which I am 
bringing home to show you. She began life as a 
weaver at the loom, lost her husband, moved her 
family into the barn, and turned her home into a 
mill, raised seven children, and now provides for all 
her poor. 

I bought from her exhibition a cape woven by 
a woman seventy years old, who raised the sheep 
and dyed the wool. Should you like the loan of this 
cape with the O'Brien picture, would love to send 
it to you for your next fair. That you may see and 



Letter from Ireland. 41 

know a little of what the women of Ireland are 
doing to-day, they have all the organizations for 
good work you have at home, and though there are 
many poor, there is much kindness to one another ; 
it extends even unto the animals, in the absence of 
other shelter sharing their very house with them. 

Of all the Botanical Gardens I have visited in 
the large cities through which I have passed, your 
own Dublin Conservatories were the finest; helio- 
trope, fuchsia, trees great, while the leaf of the lily 
in the water, it is said, would support a child, and 
with the exception of the Kew Gardens in London, 
the finest trees. 

On First Day I attended mass in St. Patrick's 
Cathedral (I love cathedrals because they are always 
open), which has been fully restored to its original 
freshness and beauty. The solemn lights from the 
recesses in the building, the magnificent tone of the 
great organ, and the dear old people passing in and 
out, makes one love to linger ; later I go to Friend's 
Meeting, which is about the size of Westfield ; its 
walls are perfectly plain, finished in hard wood, and 
as I sat down in this quiet meeting I felt at home, 
until looking up I see the hooded gallery filled with 
dear old Irish faces, with rosy cheeks and frilled 
caps, under our plain " Quaker Bonnets." We had 
a lovely meeting, and was there ever hospitality like 
that which comes from Irish hearts ; would you 
believe it, I had invitations for dinner and supper 
until the week's end. 

And now for Cork, where we drive to Blarney, 



42 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

by way of the u Home for Poor Boys/' where they 
are taught farming and dairy making (and by the 
way, I wish some of our boys would go back to 
Ireland when they grow up, and show them how to 
plant fruit trees down the cow lanes and around the 
house, and bringing a little more variety to their 
tables, lessen the desire for juices), by the Silvery 
Lee where the waters are safe, and one sees boats to 
hire, from the sizes which are just large enough for 
the happy couple or the large family party. 

For one continuous mile this river is shadowed 
by fine elms, the branches of which meet overhead, 
forming an unbroken archway a mile in length; the 
hedgerows are white with hawthorne and May, and 
sweet-scented honeysuckles blend in harmony with 
those ; there is greenness everywhere ; there is green- 
ness in the water, on the hillsides, in the valley, and 
the country resounds with the song of the thrush. 
u And would you be knowing," said the driver, 
" one dark night we took from the top of that stone 
the statue of George the Second and threw it in the 
Lee, and put in its place Father Matthew Jene, and 
they do be saying, dear lady, if you will go look in 
that well over there, you will never be needing 
second sight." 

In the afternoon we visit a little Irish home, a 
stone house with one south window, one story 
with two rooms, the smoke wreaths arising from the 
chimney, the roses reaching the roof, the dwarf 
apple trees lining the garden wall, the sheep are on 
the hill, and the donkey on the roadside. 



Letter from Ireland. 43 

Sitting by the doorway we find the dear old 
mother, and are told how she had given her seven 
sons to the Queen, and now she is alone. 

We leave Cork for Queenstown, and after a 
most enjoyable summer .we leave Queen's Hotel for 
the tender which will carry us to our steamer, the 
"Teutonic," and I asked one of your Irish boys to 
help me with my parcels, and sitting on the White 
Star wharf, I asked the boy if Queenstown ended 
there. " Oh, yes; a gentleman owned the ground 
on one side and his wife on the other, and then no 
one cared to build on the ground between, because 
they did not want to be separating man and wife, 
you know." 

So I said, " Little boy, does thee go to school?" 
u No, ma'am, I do be selling papers to the gentry, 
and when the Duke and Duchess of York came to 
Ireland, I took my extra money I did be after 
making, and went to see the horse jumping, and when 
I came home the Canon of the church who got me 
the job discharged me ; and sure, as I thought of 
my old mother, I got shaking; and he said, 'And 
frightened you be.' 4 And why shouldn't I be, 
standing as I am standing in front of the mouth of 
a cannon.' " 

There is one more visit I wish to tell you about, 
and then I have done until I see you face to face ; 
it was a drive to Glassneven Cemetery. There on the 
side of the hill, overlooking the lake and shadowed 
by the Sugar Loaf Mountain purpled by its heather, 
its banks far behind us, and the Irish Fir trees 



44 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

before us, lies a cemetery where two of your beloved 
are resting ; the lot of one is marked by the Irish 
Round Tower one hundred and thirty feet high, the 
other set in a carpet of velvety grass ; covering the 
grass are flowers by hundreds, which have been 
brought, some of them, thousands of miles, as liv- 
ing tributes for lives which have been laid down for 
others. 

The gentlemen I refer to are O'Connell and 
Parnell, who to-day are speaking in a manner which 
can be readily understood, in ways unmistakable, all 
through Ireland; and to your dear friends at home, 
who have so close to heart the future of the Emerald 
Isle, I would say be patient, encourage in your 
homes economy and plainness of dress. Ireland's 
future, like our own, will be better shaped for her 
than we can do it; the day is not far distant when> 
side by side with the free nations of the world, will 
be placed the name so dear to you all. 

"Oh, Ireland, my Ireland." 

I. E. Davis. 

Written on the steamer "Teutonic" in mid 
ocean. 



ADDRESS. 



WORK FOR ARBOR DAY. 



Young Ladies and Gentlemen:— 

It is just ten years ago that we celebrated in 
the United States for the first time " Arbor Day." 
It was in Nebraska, when the State Board of Agri- 
culture offered a special premium of one hundred 
dollars to the County Agricultural Society to the 
person who planted the most trees on Arbor Day 
of that year. The result was the planting of one 
million trees. 

In a short time it will be for us to celebrate 
our anniversary. Now my purpose this morning is 
to point out to you the work that lies nearest our 
own doors. The child that plants and names a tree 
and cares for it, will have something to love and 
elevate his mind and divert it from impure thoughts, 
and as it grows heavenward from year to year will 
lift up their own aspirations. 

I wish that each one of you here could have a 
tree in your own garden and a personal interest in 
one in your school ground. When you plant a tree 
you are doing a work for each and all in after years. 
Now a tree which you will plant and care for this 



46 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

Arbor Day will give pleasure to the eye and shade 
to the head, all through your lives, and the children 
who shall come after you. Now the best place to 
get trees is at your nurseries, but should you feel at 
this time you cannot spare the money, do not be 
discouraged, go to the nearest woods, and by asking 
you will have trees given you that, with a little extra 
care, will do quite as well, and bring you great 
pleasure. Now do not, my dear children, fear the 
word " crank;" in this work all benefactors in this 
world have had little snags to encounter in this way> 
but in the end you will be called heroes. 

Astrologers tell us that those that " plant trees 
live long." The Bible tells us that the child who 
makes two blades of grass grow where one grew 
before is greater than he who rules a nation. Then 
how much greater will be the person who makes 
thousands of trees grow where none were before. 

Now, we will give our attention to the school 
yard; so often we find it small, without any grass, 
sun beating down on little troubled heads, confusion 
everywhere ; is it a wonder sometimes children do 
not wish to go to school ? A reproach to the patrons 
of the school. 

Now get your directors and many friends and 
get to work this Arbor Day and clean up the school 
ground, gather up the flying paper, and cover it 
with beautiful grass; plant a tulip or a cucumber 
tree. Don't plant any fruit or nut-bearing trees in 
school yards ; and then I want you to see how much 
more you will love to go to school. 



Work for Arbor Day. 47 

Now, next are the church yards ; we know the 
groves were God's first temples, and it is a duty we 
owe to our God, to our fellow-man and ourselves, 
to make the surroundings of His house as attractive 
as possible ; plant here the white pine, beautiful 
emblem of a life hereafter. 

We now come to our cemeteries ; who here but 
feels the debt of gratitude we owe ! So often with 
tumble-down fences, old bushes, overgrown with 
weeds, a disgrace to the civilization of this nine- 
teenth century, a relic of barbarism to rid ourselves 
of, and a constant reproach to those whose loved 
ones lie sleeping there! make bright and beautiful 
11 God's acre," cover it with a velvet of grass, plant 
some weeping willows here to weep with us for those 
who have gone before, but also plant arbor vita 
which are always pointing heavenward to a better 
life beyond. 

And now, my dear children, what we should 
have named first we have left until last, and also 
because after I speak of it I can never talk any 
more. 

It is the garden of home. I want each and 
every one I am here addressing to plant some tree 
or shrub in your home garden, be it ever so small, 
that when you come to grow up men and women, 
and you bring into your homes all the beautiful 
things which money will buy or art supply, that after 
all the sweetest thing will be your mother and her 
garden (she may have been homely, her clothing 
plain). You see now before you a woman grown, 



48 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

whose children all tower above her, but often wait- 
ing at the twilight hour for those I love, my thoughts 
fly far away back to my childhood home, the garden 
of poppies, the boxwood rows, the lilacs I played 
beneath, the walnut tree I swung under, all planted 
by her, long since gone home to her heavenly rest. 
And so, as I leave you, it is with the wish that 
you will early in life become fond of nature, and 
through nature up to nature's God. 



A TRIP TO BERMUDA 

AND 

THE WEST INDIES. 



BERMUDA. 



The Bermudas are a group of about one hun- 
dred islands. They are situated about seven hun- 
dred miles from New York, and six hundred miles 
from the nearest land on the American coast. The 
latitude is about the same as Charleston, South 
Carolina. They are secure from the extremes of 
heat and cold, and the Gulf Stream passing between 
them and the United States, protects them from 
many of the variations to which the Southern States 
are subject. Frost and snow are absolutely un- 
known. In winter the temperature ranges from 
60 to 71 degrees, rarely varying more than eight or 
ten degrees daily. These healthy conditions are 
further enhanced by the porous coral rocks, which 
are the foundation of the islands, so that no stag- 
nant water remains, and malaria is said to be impos- 
sible. 

Although the Bermuda group is composed of 
many islands, the largest are so connected that they 



50 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

are practically one. There are five of the larger 
islands ; the largest, Bermuda, which is twenty miles 
long ; in the centre is the city of Hamilton, where 
we stopped. This is connected with the island of 
St. Georges by a causeway over a mile long. At 
the western end are the Ireland Islands. The gen- 
eral shape of the islands is that of a huge fish-hook, 
and inside of the loop are about one hundred little 
islands, that are strictly government property and 
dockyards, many of which are little more than points 
of rock. Wild flowers adorn the roadside. Lilies, 
roses and many other choice flowers are to be seen 
on every hand, while the landscape is decorated by 
the orange, lemon and palm, as well as the pride of 
India, red cedar, India rubber and many other trees 
not familiar to me. 

The town of Hamilton has seventeen thousand 
inhabitants ; all the drinking water is gathered from 
the roofs. In the House of Assembly there is a 
full-blooded negro, and the negroes are allowed to 
vote if they own real estate. No American can buy 
real estate here, and are rarely successful in busi- 
ness. The principal crops here for the agriculturist 
are lilies, potatoes and onions. The rich soil is red, 
which accounts for the color of the Bermuda potato. 
The trees of most value are the cedar and palmetto ; 
the former is held here in large reservations by the 
Queen. On January 18th strawberries are being 
picked in the open air, potatoes being gathered and 
melons being planted. The drive to the Governor's 
mansion is superb, the color effect of the purple 



A Trip to Bermuda. 51 

blooming bourgainvillier against the gray rocks being 
almost matchless. 

The fields look like little spots of miniature plant- 
ing in the woods. Donkeys are much used. Cereals 
not grown. There are many quaint churches, 
the salaries of the clergy are partly paid by England. 

Bermuda is an important military station and 
naval headquarters. About three thousand troops 
are stationed here at all times, and is said to be one 
of the most healthy stations under the English flag. 
It is the headquarters of the North Atlantic squad- 
ron. The dockyard at Ireland Island is the largest 
in the world, and is of great interest to visitors. 
Military and naval displays of all kinds are of fre- 
quent occurrence. The great event of the week is 
to see the steamer come in from New York. 

A stranger floating in a boat over the white 
shoals of the coral reefs will be wonderstruck by 
the marvelous clearness of the water and the great 
depth to which you can see. The sunlight reaches 
many fathoms down upon this vast submarine plain, 
displaying all to the gaze as the ship passes by ; and 
then the color, that beautiful bewildering green, 
just the shade one catches in the gleam of an opal, 
and that painters have sought in vain to rival with 
their pigments. 

As we leave the harbor we pass a Spanish ves- 
sel, "The Verdad," recently wrecked upon the 
rocks, with casks of St. Cruz rum floating in the 
water, probably the best consignment that could be 
made of it. The vessel was wrecked in full sight 



52 Recollections of a *Busy Life. 

of land in daytime, but none would signal them of 
their danger, as they had refused to pay the pilot 
fee, $25. Poor Spain! However, a tug went off 
and got the men, who were all fumigated, and then 
charged upon the Spanish consul. 



BARBADOS. 

After a most delightful sea voyage from Ber- 
muda we arrive at Barbados in the early morning. 
As we steamed along the west side of the island 
toward the bay, the view was very beautiful. Long 
ranges of limestone terraces rose above each other, 
with here and there round hills covered with fields 
of bright green sugar-cane and picturesque wind- 
mills and sugar houses. Nearby the planters' houses, 
embosomed in groves of mahogany, bread fruit and 
orange trees. Here and there arose the tower of 
some little church ; rows of stately palms crowned 
the tops of ridges, leading through magnificent 
avenues up to stately residences; groves of cocoa- 
nut palms bent gracefully over the water's edge ; 
white limestone roads wound like ribbons through 
the green fields of cane. All this, with the deep 
blue sea dashing high over the coral reefs on the 
shore. The great stretches of far-away land form 
a rare, and, with me, never-to-be-forgotten panor- 
ama. The air is the most delightful of any of the 
islands, and would be a haven of rest for us as a 



A Trip to the West Indies. 53 

sanitarium, were it not that between this island and 
the States lie about two thousand miles of sea. 
There is constantly blowing across the island a 
northeast wind, and it is considered one of the most 
healthy stations for English soldiers in the world. 
Cottages, with bath, rent here for twenty dollars per 
month. We met here a bright young Barbadian 
who was receiving a salary of three hundred dollars 
per year under the Colonial government, and who 
was engaged to be married, but his prospective 
father-in-law refused his consent until he could get 
five hundred dollars per year, which was considered 
ample. 

We anchored in the harbor, always keeping in 
thirty fathoms of water, so that we were never sub- 
ject to the laws of the islands visited. It seems that 
thirty fathoms is construed to be upon the high seas. 
Now we are in the Caribbean Sea among the Caribs, 
and what memories come floating before my vision: 
Columbus — the Slave Trade — the Papal Bull be- 
stowing upon Spain all the countries in the tropics 
west of the Atlantic. 

On reaching the island the lightest garments, 
with shade hats and umbrellas, are a necessity, the 
mercury ranging at 80 or above. The steamers 
stop long enough to take in all the sights, but can- 
not take in all the long excursions, making the runs 
from island to island at night. On going ashore we 
start at once for Hastings, where there is the famous 
rock, and nearby is the Marine Villa Hotel, and a 
smaller and more delightful place, kept by a Swiss 



54 Recollections of a "Busy Life. 

right over the sea. Sitting in the pavilion by the 
sea, you feel that it is one of the most delightful 
places in the world. First comes the sensation that 
you have everything that heart and mind can wish 
for, the uselessness of acquiring more, and then you 
fall asleep, and from this dream you are awakened 
by the call of the sailors, and on looking up you see 
freighters marked Boston, some with cod, and 
another with New York flour, and your sweet dream 
is gone, and one realizes that it is our spirit of thrift 
that enables the people on this island to live. 
There are more inhabitants here to the square mile 
than in any other country of the globe save China. 
There are twenty thousand more women than men, 
and with them it must be work or perish. The 
natives give much pleasure to tourists by diving for 
coins and showing you around. They are unani- 
mous in the desire to live and die Barbadians. This 
is an English island. The botanical gardens are 
fine. 

The Savannah is the principal place for amuse- 
ments ; it is a fine field of some forty acres, round 
in shape, and surrounded by beautiful trees. All 
around runs a carriage road, while outside are the 
garrison buildings and barracks ; there the races are 
held, and we see the cricket and lawn tennis parties 
enjoying themselves. One of these meetings is a 
sight to remember: the fluttering pennons, the gaily 
colored dresses of the negroes, the picturesque 
uniforms of the Zouaves, the Queen's own regiment 
of native blacks, the colored jackets of the jockeys, 



A Trip to the West Indies. 55 

and there is such fun shining in the faces of the 
negroes, and their rollicking laughter at the slight- 
est thing comical. We notice on entering a church 
or pleasure ground that the whites always have an 
entrance of their own. 

There is no gunning, but the sea abounds with 
fish, the choice being the flying fish. The only forest 
left on this island is Scotland Hills ; they are a rare 
bit of tropical woods. It is a remnant of the one 
that once covered the island. The only wonder 
is they have survived till now, land being so exceed- 
ingly high. However, the woods stand until this 
day. Let us hope they may hold their ground for 
many years against that terrible foe to the wilds of 
nature — the sugar cane. 



ST. LUCIE. 

Our next island, St. Lucie, the second largest. 
It is famous for its picturesque beauty from the sea. 
There is much good land, with many hills and moun- 
tains and beautiful valleys. The town of Castries is 
the capitol. The steamer draws up to the wharf 
here, a feat that is not possible at any other island. 
One should climb the hill and visit the broad savan- 
nah where lies the government station. The view 
here is superb, and a most interesting occupation is 
that of coaling, and is done by women, who carry it 
on their heads in baskets. St. Lucie has its sulphur 



56 Recollections of a llasy Life. 

mountains, but by far the most beautiful are the 
Pitons, shaped like pyramids, and covered with 
green to their very tops ; that is one of the wonders 
of nature here, everything is so luxuriant. The 
ride is over the Saddleback (twelve miles), which 
should not be omitted by those wishing to view the 
beauties of a wild tropical country, as well as sugar 
plantations. 

St. Lucie is English, you know. Has a fine 
botanical garden, a cathedral of natural wood; it is 
unfinished and unpaid for, having a debt of $20,000 ; 
active public school, supported in part by England 
and the British West Indies Company, the children 
having to pay one cent per week themselves. Every- 
thing is very low here morally. The natives here 
wear very little clothing, children entirely naked 
until the age of going to school, and it is pitiable 
to meet them upon the wharf in going to the 
steamer, mothers begging you to take their children 
home with you. The street cleaners get two pence 
per day ; the men all out on the sugar plantations. 
The women will dance the Cairo dance on the street 
or under the banyan trees. 

England is hard on her colonies, and one's 
heart is touched by the poor of this island. The 
tourist is made most uncomfortable by the number 
of guides who, pressed by hunger, insist, for a few 
pennies, on accompanying you for the day (not 
unusual to be accompanied by ten), and you feel 
here such a sense of protection as you go on the 
steamer at night. 



A Trip to the West Indies. 57 

MARTINIQUE. 

Picture a mountain fifty miles in length, covered 
from base to summit, from circling Caribbean Sea 
to cloud-capped crest, with such vegetation as only 
the tropics can display. The harbor is a bay three 
miles in length. Imagine a town of houses of stone, 
covered with earthen tiles ; the streets are narrow, 
the sidewalks more narrow, crowded with people, a 
motley assembly of French people of every hue. The 
colored Creoles, the females who frequent the streets 
and market places, are attired in quaint, curious long 
dresses, gathered up under the shoulder blades, and 
with waistbands drawn up tightly under the arms. 
If the dresses are gay the turbans are gorgeous, and 
sometimes covered with jewels. 

This island is an incline from a high mountain 
to the sea, and the town is terraced. Through 
every street runs a gutter of water from the hills, 
and in the early morning you will see these gutters 
alive with people. You will meet, perhaps, the babe 
taking its bath held by maternal hands, the pet 
poodle being soused in the narrow gutter. The 
streams are fed from mountain lakes, and every- 
where is cleanliness, conspicuous even among the 
lowest classes. There are fine cathedrals here, a 
theatre, cool squares and refreshing fountains, won- 
derful plants, a fine museum of natural history, and 
shaded promenades where a band gives excellent 
music. 

The stores contain abundance of French goods, 



58 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

the hotels and cooking fair. It is a fine drive to 
the statue of Josephine, wife of Napoleon, who was 
born here. This island seems like a miniature 
France ; one sees the same agricultural designs on 
the hills, the beautiful French fountains, and even 
as poor as they are, the same taste in the arranging 
of colors in the dresses. Here are mineral springs 
said to possess such great curative powers. They 
flow in large streams from the ground, and the 
water is carried into the bathing houses where the 
invalids come. 

I love here to linger in the woods by the road- 
side, and breathe the air perfumed with the breath 
of orange groves that adjoin the road ; but beware 
here of the fer de lance (a snake), as the mongoose 
has made but little progress in extirpating this rep- 
tile. No washing here allowed in the town, but is 
carried on by the washers in the river, and paid for 
by the city, And here one meets with that fearful 
disease, elephantiasis, contracted by the washers, 
in which the body becomes swollen three times its 
natural size. 



DOMINICA. 

We sail next to Dominica, and each island 
seems to grow in attractiveness. Here the moun- 
tains attain great heights, and the cliffs to greater 
proportions, and the vegetation that covers all as 



A Trip to the West Indies. 59 

with a carpet grows richer and more rank. The 
perfection of loveliness is attained in Dominica. 

You may ascend in one hour from the heated 
coast to the cool and verdant mountains, and view 
wonders in vegetation which we seldom ever see. 
At so great a height the tree fern makes its appear- 
ance, and soon you will be lost in admiration of the 
mountain flora, ferns and begonias and orchids and 
colberes which are never seen out of the tropics. 
The great trees are enveloped in masses of air plants, 
and the branches woven together by climbing vines 
and bush ropes. 

Here for the first time we hear the beautiful 
melody of the Solitaire Whistler, and after resting 
we start for the sulphur springs where the water is 
boiling all the time. 

The guide books state that this is the most 
beautiful island in the world, and for once nothing 
is exaggerated ; words are beyond the power of de- 
scription, and even the imagination is bound by the 
matchless beauty of the scene. Mountains and ver- 
dure, with odors and atmosphere, all blending into a 
perfection personified. 



GUADALOUPE. 

There is everything here to attract a person in 
search of a mild climate : pure air, boating, bathing, 
fishing, good driving and pleasant society. The 
Governor's house, Farley Hall, and some of the 



60 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

country churches are very elegant, and draped with 
ivy. The town is regularly built with broad, straight 
streets, with a fountain in the centre of the market 
place, a fine cathedral, and many stores and houses. 

Here is the second largest sugar factory in the 
world. The cane is carried from the field in ox- 
carts, then passed through the rollers of the grind- 
ing mill, and from one process to another, when 
at the end is the most beautiful sugar and molasses. 

Some of the cane is also brought to mill in 
huge iron boats, which are lifted bodily upon a 
great hydraulic scale, built in the water, and which, 
with its contents, are weighed before unloading. 



ANTIGUA. 



We now proceed to Antigua, the seat of govern- 
ment of the Leeward Islands. It has wide and lovely 
fields, a pleasant contrast to the other islands. Its 
principal town is St. John; it has a fine cathedral, the 
largest of any of the islands. The roads are excellent, 
and lead to some fine beaches. The numerous ponds 
abound in ducks and coots, and in season the pas- 
tures swarm with plover, and the coasts are sur- 
rounded by sea birds. 

The harbor is barred by a coral reef. To the 
north and on the point of the hill one sees the leper 
hospital, with twenty-two inmates. We are told 



A Trip to the JVest Indies. 61 

that Guadaloupe has over one hundred of these help- 
less creatures. 

Between Antigua and Guadaloupe arise most 
of our tropic cyclones, and we have here, established 
under the Agricultural Department of the govern- 
ment, signal service stations that cable daily the 
weather conditions to Washington, whereby many 
thousand dollars worth of property are yearly saved, 
as well as many valuable human lives. 

This island, being level, is in its highest state 
of cultivation, with lime and lemon orchards and 
sugar cane the principal staples. Here we find 
many black Irish people, who are adepts in the art 
of begging. They are the result of a colony of 
Irish emigrants sent out here over one hundred 
years ago. No carriages are to be had here. The 
road to the north leads to the celebrated lime-juice 
factories, it being the special product here. 

The town is fairly pretty, but small. The 
knowledge that it is the home of the lepers of these 
islands seems to cast a gloom over all. Back and 
forth, all day long, are to be seen the Sisters of 
Charity carrying the food over to the settlement, 
across a long causeway built over to the island, where 
the lepers come and get it, and take it away. 



ST. KITTS. 

This is an island of great beauty and fertility. 
Population is thirty thousand, and on the side of 
the Caribbean Sea is the celebrated Monkey Hunt 



62 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

woods, which seems to have been abandoned to the 
monkeys. 

The point of interest to me was the park in 
Basse Terre, the royal palms and the banyan trees, 
with the drive through the sugar plantations, and 
gorgeous tropical growths ; one banyan tree alone in 
the public garden has limbs that extend sixty-five 
feet. One of the curiosities here are the white pea 
fowls. Two hours ride and you reach the moun- 
tain lake, occupying the crater of an extinct vol- 
cano. 

The air plants are here seen in their greatest 
beauty, and all through the flowers dart and flutter 
the gorgeous humming-birds, splendid in their hues 
of purple, garnet and green. 

A ride to Grand Bay in a donkey wagon well 
repays one, while a dinner at the hotel, of fresh fruit, 
fish and local fruits, will be a pleasant memory in 
days to come. 

Here are the pomegranates, tamarinds, dates 
and many trees covered with magenta blossoms. 

The highest mountain, Mt. Misery, from which 
there is a beautiful view of the surrounding coun- 
try. The valleys and fields are well watered with 
many fine streams that are spanned with stone 
bridges; the shore is sandy; this tract of land slopes 
gently back from the sea to the base of the moun- 
tain. There are about seventy miles of road run- 
ning along the seacoast of the island, and communi- 
cation is kept up in a very unique manner among 
the natives by large six-oared canoes. Tourists 



A Trip to the West Indies. 63 

taking this method of viewing the island get an 
insight into the local peculiarities that are very inter- 
esting. 

As we return to our steamer we are met by a 
strange conglomeration of monkeys, parrots, turtles, 
with strange fish of brilliant colors, even to their 
babies, all for sale by the natives. 



SANTA CRUZ. 

An island celebrated for its fine climate and its 
rum. This combination is considered by the natives 
here to be a blessing to many invalids who come 
here from the States. The roads here are bor- 
dered by cocoanut trees. This island is owned by 
Denmark. 

American money passes readily here cent for 
cent. There are no public conveyances here, but 
one can hire a private carriage for one dollar an 
hour. The town is most interesting, with yellow 
and pink arcaded buildings, many places showing 
ruins left from a recent revolt of the blacks. The 
Danish fort and soldiers are interesting ; they are 
paid but sixteen cents per day with dinner. It 
appears that the French soldiers get a franc per 
day, the English a shilling per day, and the United 
States soldiers about fifty cents per day, with three 
meals, which is about double any others. 

The drive here is to Bassin, the road lined with 



64 Recollections of a *Busy Life. 

great palms, with bananas growing in the fields upon 
either side ; and by the roadside, under the trees, 
sit the natives chewing on the sugar cane and drink- 
ing their molasses and chewing a crust of bread, 
happy and content throughout the livelong day. 



PORTO RICO. 

This morning, for the first time, we placed our 
feet upon this American soil. To all Americans it 
has assumed special interest, as it is now practically 
in the possession of the United States, and sooner 
or later will be represented by a new star in our 
beautiful flag. 

We will certainly find this a rich and fertile 
island, and a most valuable possession, and without 
exaggeration, the garden spot of the world. There 
is no doubt that when our flag waves permanently 
over it there will be an influx of American enterprise 
and wealth ; there will be a marvelous increase in value 
of all kinds. The Spaniards have looked upon this 
island more in the light of a lemon from which 
every drop of juice must be squeezed; but now, 
under more happy circumstances, this charming lit- 
tle island will blossom as the rose, for agriculturists 
tell me that more can be grown to the acre of land 
in Porto Rico than in any other part of the globe. 
The water of the river and brooks is remarkably 
pure, and there is quite an industry in its shipment 



A Trip to the West Indies. 65 

and sale to other West India Islands. Little boats 
sail up its rivers, fill their tanks, and sail away with 
pure water for other islands. 

The island is perfectly adapted to commerce, 
growing sugar, coffee, cotton and tobacco. We 
visited Morro Castle, which is now being restored, 
one shell alone having passed directly through the 
castle, removing a steeple from a church, and de- 
molishing two houses. Just by the sea nearby the 
castle, is the graveyard where graves are rented out 
at, I think, thirty-nine dollars per year. When it is 
not paid, the body is taken up and thrown into the 
public dump. 

I would suggest that we make Porto Rico an 
experiment station for cremation. On the part of 
the natives one sees much good feeling. On one of 
my walks, having admired a small banana tree which 
I desired to purchase, I was handed back the coin 
with "No, no, Amerique." 

In going out to our steamer, the conversation 
fell upon bull-fights, when a Spanish consul on 
board remarked that they were much more refined 
than our foot-ball matches. The discussion waxing 
warm and the boat beginning to rock, I asked them 
if they would like to hear a story. On their assent, 
I said — u Once I heard two Irishmen arguing which 
was the safer, travel by land or by water. The one 
said, * In traveling by rail, in case of accident, you 
knew where you were, but in case yez are in a boat, 
and it upsets, where is yez ?' " 

The guests of the steamer were here tendered 



66 Recollections of a *Busy Life. 

a reception by General Fred. Grant, and he was 
most courteous. We were introduced to Mr. 
Manowel, the projector of the Nicaragua Canal, 
who was with Colonel Waring in Havana, and has 
been in Porto Rico the last two months, superintend- 
ing the drainage of Porto Rico. At the present 
time the toilet rooms are simply dark rooms, with 
a small aperture at the top for ventilation. There 
are no mattresses used, even in the best hotels, 
where the rates are three to four dollars per day. 

In going to the barracks and Morro Castle the 
rumor was started that I was Clara Barton. So, on 
passing in the barracks, each soldier stood in line, 
hat at side and hand extended. I shook hands with 
a number, when I looked up and saw for two blocks 
ahead soldiers, I began to realize the situation. It 
was touching in the extreme, but an episode difficult 
to forget. 

There are now about four to five hundred men 
employed at work here in cleaning up this town. 
The natives get forty cents per day, a good carpen- 
ter one dollar, and a mason one dollar and twenty- 
five cents. The natives, though excellent workmen, 
cannot follow out a plan, but when it is once made 
plain to them, are surprising adepts as imitators. If 
it were not three thousand miles away, mostly over 
a choppy gulf stream, what a future would await 
the syndicate erecting here a fine hotel; but one 
gets enough of the sea going and coming. They 
tell me that the soil is twenty feet in depth, and that 
they cannot tell the time when a fertilizer will be 



A Trip to the West Indies. 67 

needed. Also much interest is taken in tobacco 
growing. One idea is that the strength of the 
Cuban tobacco is caused by the east wind from the 
shore blowing the fine white sand on the leaf, thereby 
retaining the gum in the leaf. 

The first of this year there was a proclamation 
issued that all children over twelve years of age 
must wear clothes. Near the centre of San Juan is 
a magnificent monument erected to Columbus; sur- 
rounding it are steps ; as the night draws near you 
will see the children leaving their hot homes and 
going over to the monument; will lie down to sleep 
with their little hands under their heads, and in the 
morning they are all ready for play. 

The city is lighted by gas, which is controlled 
by an English company, and it is now erecting an 
electric plant. There is also a telephone, over which 
w r e heard of the killing of a prisoner by the guard 
for insubordination. 

There is one beautiful military road which 
extends across the island from San Juan to Ponce, 
which I would advise all tourists to take. There is 
one point at which it is five miles around, but there 
is a ravine between, over which one can toss a stone. 
It is a good bicycle path, over which one young 
man went five times in a week hunting for his bag- 
gage. 

There is but one stage line across, and they 
always wait at one end for baggage or passengers 
until they turn up, so you can spend a few days in a 
leisurely manner waiting for the bus. 



68 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

Sugar is a heavy industry, and I am told that it 
yields on an average of three hogsheads per acre. 
Besides this, there are known to be gold, copper, 
iron, zinc and coal mines. Also extensive sponge 
fields, quarries of white stone, granite and marble. 
Poverty is almost unknown, for most men are prop- 
erty owners, and the women all have their chickens. 

The natives have few wants, and spend most of 
their time swinging in their hammocks, smoking 
cigarettes and strumming upon a mandolin. 

Gambling is said to be universal here, from the 
rich planter to the laborer. All are most hospita- 
ble. There are no public schools, and a large num- 
ber of the whites can neither read nor write ; but 
many schools and methods of tuition are already in 
progress. 

The women are of medium size and exquisitely 
formed. They have the coquetry of the women of 
the tropics, and one cannot fail to be impressed 
with their delicacy and grace. They are mostly 
Roman Catholics, and are very devout. The ladies 
wear the mantilla on the streets, and carry their 
brilliant or black fans. 

When all has been said, it seems perfectly sure 
that Porto Rico will become one of the most impor- 
tant of our possessions. Superstition and tyranny 
will be driven from this most fertile island, and hope 
and peace under the stars and stripes will be brought 
to thousands now under foot, and some day may it 
become a bright star in our flag that stands for pro- 
tection and freedom for all. 



A Trip to the West Indies. 69 

ST. THOMAS. 

This will be our last stop. The place is Dan- 
ish, the town quaint and odd. Even like its name, 
Charlotte Amelia. Here was the home of Blue- 
beard, the great pirate, and the graves of his ten 
wives. Tradition seems uncertain whether his wives 
all lived together, for the tower is very small, or 
whether they occupied it consecutively. The castle 
is in shape like the Irish Round Tower, from which 
a fine view can be had of the harbor and beyond, 
so that the approach of a vessel can be seen for 
many miles. The harbor is a most wonderful and 
natural formation. Large coaling station here. 
Our two training school ships are here, the Vicks- 
burg and Annapolis, from which we brought two 
large bags of mail; also a Russian training ship, 
whose crews got up a fine boat race in the afternoon 
over a triangular course that kept them in sight all 
the time. The harbor is about like that at New- 
port, Rhode Island, except for the Narragansett 
Bay approach. 

In the town there is a fine public library, right 
at the wharf; also a sailor's rest and a fine park. At 
the landing there are lots of fruits and curios for 
sale, also fine coral and bay oil and rum, as the 
natives are fully aware that this is the last stop. It 
is strange to think what a checkered career these 
islands have had, and how far they are even now 
from any condition that promises permanency. 

The islands are populated by refugees, savages, 



70 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

and former slaves, planters seeing their places fall- 
ing to decay. Our trade withdrawn, there comes 
into one's heart a pity for these people, so hospita- 
ble, so kind, that it makes one feel that possibly the 
acquisition of Porto Rico by us is in accordance 
with the divine Providence, and that eventually we 
may be able to extend to all a protection unheard 
of in those islands until the present day. 



ANNUAL ADDRESS 

AT 

TRENTON, N. J. 



Another year has rolled around in the life of 
our Association. Viewed from one standpoint, it 
has not been attended with the results that we had 
planned. Death has entered our Executive Coun- 
cil; your President has been abroad four months; 
and our Governor withholding his signature from 
our Forestry Commission bill has been most disas- 
trous. 

But viewed from another direction — that this 
Forestry Association has come to stay, to remain a 
working body, until the forestry work of the State 
of New Jersey shall be taken up by our representa- 
tives and placed side by side with the other lines of 
work in our State. 

The conservation of our forests and their sci- 
entific control ; to promote the work of reforesting 
denuded districts; to encourage the production of 
wood as a crop ; to consider the problems of forest 
planting, the relation of forests to climate, rainfall 
and stream flow; to advance the cause of scientific 



72 Recollections of a Tiusy Life. 

education in relation to forests and the prevention 
of forest fires — these are our aims. 

The Forestry associations of New York and 
Pennsylvania have been most fortunate in Governors 
who are wide awake to the lumber interests in their 
States. 

I believe that forestry reform has passed its 
critical days, and now what is most required is care- 
ful, thoughtful enthusiasm on the part of those 
engaged in the movement, and an enrolment among 
the active supporters of forest protection of the 
thousands of citizens of the State of New Jersey 
who, while believing in the purposes of our For- 
estry Association, have not become actively recog- 
nized in its membership. New Jersey has many 
good forest laws, but her citizens do not look to 
the enforcement of them. 

I am much pleased with the Arbor Day celebra- 
tion in the public schools of our State this year, six 
thousand packages of seed being distributed through 
the schools in the southern part of the State, 
and many public school grounds planted with shade 
trees. 

Each year the recognition of Arbor Day be- 
comes more and more pronounced. The children 
who are being taught to-day the care and value of 
a single tree will, in a few years, be the leaders in 
this work. 

I have made a tour of many thousands of miles 
through rich farming districts, and the largest 
trees are the oaks in Derbyshire, England, and 



Annual Address. 73 

the smallest the willows around Loch Lomond, in 
Scotland. 

Two clear impressions stand out as the result 
of my investigations in the United States — the waste 
of timber and the great destruction by forest fires. 

The unkempt and slovenly condition at the 
headwaters of our rivers, and the apathetic indiffer- 
ence of our people, is truly alarming. At this time 
land can be bought for $1.50 an acre, being known 
as timbered land, and includes no mountains or 
rocks. It is valueless to the owner, but would be 
past estimating to our State for reforesting, thereby 
protecting the water supply and avoiding the danger 
to the streams and canals from the cutting off of 
soft timber, and the greater danger of removal of 
that which remains. 

This, to my mind, requires close watchfulness, 
not only for the protection of the forests, but in 
order to save the State hundreds of thousands of 
dollars in a purchase which is inevitable. 

And now I close by making a strong appeal to 
the women of this Association, who, I believe, have 
natural talents for this work. A true love of the 
beautiful and nature everywhere will make us most 
successful in acquiring new members. 

For years we have sailed our bark on the ocean 
of life, as our friend tells us, sometimes steering 
through quiet waters, sometimes upsetting the boat; 
but let us work together until the tangled forests 
and the poisonous swamps yield abundant fruits — 
the result of our toil. 



74 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

Our State is awakening to a realization of the 
value of its forests, none too soon. In some sec- 
tions the awakening is, we fear, too late to permit of 
any material benefit for a number of years. 



ADDRESS. 



To your honored President and the ladies of 
the Porch Club; the Board of Directors of the 
Aged Woman's Home, and the Directors of all our 
Guilds and friends I bid welcome here to-day ; and 
it is with a feeling of pride that I gaze upon 
your faces all marked by the impress of good work. 

You who have done and are doing so much to 
enrich the minds for the elevation of character, and 
the drawing nearer to each other socially by the 
breaking of bread, until we, your friends, have 
learned to love you, knowing that when the River- 
ton Porch Club leads, good work is sure to follow: 

And to you, the Directors of our Needlework 
Guilds, I would say the good work is going on. I 
visited, when in Queenstown, the home of the 
founder, Lady Wolverton. She built even better 
than she knew, for to-day we find thirty-seven States 
represented in this work. 

In this way the Needlework Guild of America 
gains not only that unity, but that stimulus which 
comes from the fact that tens of thousands of mem- 
bers are working together for the realization of 
the same high ideal, the alleviation of the body. 



76 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

And now I wish I could say some words to 
impress all here represented in the good work of 
starting Emergency rooms in towns where there are 
no hospitals. In Sansalito, California, I visited 
what had once been a Guild Emergency room, 
now developed into a miniature Guy Hospital of 
London. 

Thousands have already been blessed by these 
institutions, and what will the future bring, not to 
thousands or tens of thousands, but hundreds of 
thousands will enjoy the blessing of this work, as 
nearly four hundred thousand garments have been 
contributed the last year. 

In the group before me we have represented 
the Board of the Aged Woman's Home in Bur- 
lington, and our hearts are filled with esteem and 
admiration for those women whose generosity knows 
no limit ; this home adds to the glory of the city 
it adorns. And our earnest wish is, that our dear 
old friends may find in this beautiful home by the 
river, needful rest. We trust they may spend many 
of their declining days in the enjoyment of a well- 
earned leisure, and we pray that the dear Father, 
who rules the Universe, will keep the dear women 
of the Board of this Home, and give them many 
years to enjoy the fruits of this life and their 
labors. 

Now I wish that I could conscientiously leave 
you all here on this high pinnacle of fame, but too 
often 1 hear you lamenting that you have not more 
money to carry on your good works, and to join in 



Address. 77 

the various isms of to-day which go so far to de- 
velop the new woman — Century Club, Physical Cul- 
ture, French and Embroidery Class, etc. 

There are few things more tiresome in a moder- 
ately tiresome world, than the popular phrase which 
catches and holds the public by virtue of its total 
lack of significance, such a phrase to me has always 
been the " New Woman." It has furnished inex- 
haustible jests, and has apparently been received 
with seriousness by those who read the present by 
the past. 

We far exaggerate our responsibilities when we 
fancy the wrongs of humanity are waitingfor us to 
redress them, forgetting the fact that our dear 
mothers have sailed over this same ocean of life, 
steering safely through rough waters, and then, like 
ourselves, sometimes upsetting the boat. The most 
lamentable consequence of this mental confusion is 
a tendency to look after man, rather than look after 
ourselves, to wish to help him do his work, for 
which assistance he does not care, rather than map 
out distinctly and practically our own sphere of 
labor, to base our most strenuous efforts of reform 
more upon the past failures of men, rather than the 
mistakes of ourselves, which are quite serious enough 
to merit our whole consideration. 

In my opinion, dear friends, we have a natural 
talent for affairs, a God-given instinct placed in 
every mother heart, even in the face of contradictory 
reports in every-day life ; while no doubt the hus- 
band is the finest financier, still, in my mind, it 



78 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

hardly equals the wife's knowledge of money; of 
what it can be reasonably trusted to buy for the 
family. 

And now right here do I wish to declare on the 
side of physical culture for women ; a true system 
of physical culture properly taught aids in building 
up ideal character, first through its effects on health, 
and in the nature of things, on character. 

Health tends to a moral conduct by giving self- 
reliance to its possessor, and thereby freeing him 
from petty temptations which so beset the weak. 
Again, the study of physical culture leads to 
character by establishing in our minds ideals of 
beauty. 

Now, some people call every kind of exercise 
physical culture. I do not. Nothing ought to be 
called by that term which does not recognize this 
principle, that this body is a servant of the soul. 

Physical culture leads to the study of morals, 
to the study of man as a spiritual being, to the 
study of the soul; and the proper study of the soul 
leads to this conclusion: that the chief end and aim 
of every one of us in this world is to influence others 
by precept and by example toward a higher state of 
living. 

Now, if you will allow me to suggest, and in 
order that the Riverton Porch Club may do more 
effective work in its organization, and its power for 
good felt as a beneficent influence throughout our 
town, it should have a spiritual solidity. Just as 
each individual has something peculiarly character- 



Address. 79 

istic to contribute to her club, a paper, an essay, 
review, or a talk, be it literary, historical, philan- 
thropic, or practically educational, and the club 
feels it to be too valuable to be heard by members 
only. 

Now, if such papers could be sent to our local 
journal, great benefit might ensue to a much larger 
and less favored class than the members of your 
club, as much of the sweetness of life comes from 
intercourse, and much of our strength from combi- 
nation. 

We have now passed through the wood, and 
now proceed to the more intimate relations of the 
home. I have learned much from your club, and 
gained much from the association of friends in the 
good works that I have the honor to represent. 
And now may I ask you to lay aside all the moment- 
ous questions which are worrying and paling the 
faces of our good women of to-day, as to who shall 
be the first in our towns, the trying to appear what 
we are not. Now, if you will come into my garden, 
I will tell you how to have always plenty and enough 
to spare, how to make two blades of grass grow 
where one grew before. 

Friends, in one year, from my own garden, one 
acre of land, my family of seven were supplied with 
all the vegetables, fruits, berries and flowers that we 
required, besides chickens, eggs, squabs, and at the 
same time sold $85 worth to help on a good work, 
the nucleus of which has developed to-day into the 
Riverton Library. 



80 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

I have the answer, " Yes, but your garden is 
larger than mine." I know, but on one-quarter of 
an acre, at a cost of $35 for labor and seeds, I can 
do the same thing for my own family, less the sell- 
ing for charitable purposes. How many here to- 
day can tell what it means to a family, in economy, 
to have come in from the garden fresh daily, the 
little red radish, cucumbers for breakfast, what the 
tomatoes and squab counts for at the mid-day lunch, 
the salad and chickens and flowers for the dinner. 
If, as I hear you say, " Yes, but I never could stand 
those straight rows in the garden, I am too artistic 
for that," then may I tell you the same results will 
come if the planting is done in diamond, crescent 
and oval designs. Watch up well to the color of the 
leaves ; a pretty blending is lettuce, green and red 
beets ; cover your hedges with lima beans and your 
trellises with tomatoes. 

The good housewife should have kept on her 
kitchen range a blue and white enameled kettle, then 
do away with what is called the waste pail ; it only 
draws flies and becomes odorous while waiting the 
slopman's coming to empty it into his cart. Have 
put into this kettle all the parings of vegetables, 
fruits, the waste bits of meats and the scrapings of 
the plates. The plates and pans are washed in soap 
water; have this also put into the pot. Now, in the 
morning have this thickened with a little Indian 
meal and feed to your chickens daily, and so you 
have eggs enough and to spare. 

Some two years ago I had occasion to help a 



Address. 81 

poor old couple, the husband partially paralyzed. 
Being very busy at the time, I had sent them two 
dozen chickens from Roadsides, my farm. I did 
not hear again from the old people until spring, 
when the old lady told me she had done as I had 
directed her, with the result they had always a 
breakfast of eggs; the young chickens they ate, and 
sold $8.75 worth, with which money they bought 
two tons of coal for the winter. 

Now, my friends, if you will follow me back of 
the Kew Gardens on a suburb of London, I will 
show you an old woman, a caretaker of what has 
once been a palatial home, who utilizes the ruins of 
an old conservatory by raising grapes; they were 
perfectly magnificent, one bunch of black Hamburgs 
alone weighing seven pounds, or rather, that is what 
she charged me for. 

Grapes are easily grown and should find a 
home in every garden ; and here I would mention 
unfermented grape juice, so delicious in winter, made 
from loose grapes and broken bunches unfit for 
table use. 

Now, if you will come with me to a French 
garden in a suburb of Paris, I will tell you what I 
saw at the back kitchen door: a trellis covered with 
one tomato vine upon which I could have picked 
one half a peck (secret, it had been watered by dish- 
water) ; a hedge beautifully covered with a bean 
vine, besides cucumbers for a family from two barrel 
heads on a verandah. 

At the Hamburg Fair, at which I had the 



82 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

honor of representing the w New Jersey Forestry 
Association," I saw a box the size of a trunk exhib- 
ited by a woman who grew five crops of potatoes in 
it in one year; her object was advertising fertilizers, 
and also it had frequent and regular waterings. 

Come with me to an Oakland Garden, in Califor- 
nia, and I will show you a garden of one acre upon 
which five Chinese gardeners live and provide for 
their families by raising vegetables for the Palace 
Hotel in San Francisco. 

In Glasgow, Scotland, is a woman raising 
melons for the Queen in a garden enclosed in glass. 
There they lie in little hammocks suspended from 
the ceiling, and judging from the appearance of her- 
self and family, I should say she did well. 

I made a tour of many thousand miles through 
rich farming districts. The largest trees were oaks 
in Derbyshire, England, and the smallest were wil- 
lows in Loch Lomond, Scotland, each fulfilling alike 
their work in the garden of nature. 

Now, my friends, what I cannot understand 
that with all our opportunities for using money, 
with all your knowledge of books, you can be so 
wasteful of your gardens, that if you do not need the 
land yourself for extensive gardening, that you will 
deprive the poor of thousands of dollars worth 
of food annually. Have we a right to purchase ex- 
emption from care at the cost of immeasurable suf- 
fering from creatures whose very helplessness should 
win protection from our strength. The one inex- 
plicable thing to me in this world is pain. Its 



Address. 83 

presence everywhere dims the beauty of the world 
and stifles faith in many a bleeding heart. We 
cannot banish it, we cannot understand it, but we 
can help to allay it. But that we should deliberately, 
wilfully and thoughtfully add to it not slightly, but 
to an extent which cannot be calculated nor calmly 
considered, is something which even the most selfish 
spirit recoils from hearing the truth. 

All here have realized the joy of living a life, 
the result of which shall last forever; and now, may 
I ask this Association to help the good work along; 
a true love of the beautiful in nature everywhere will 
make our work most successful. 

And now the garden I should have spoken of 
first, I have left to the last, because after I speak of 
it I cannot talk any more. It was my mother's gar- 
den at home. I wish I could persuade each and all 
here this afternoon to plant some tree, some vine or 
shrub, that when your children grow up men and 
women, and bring into their homes all the beautiful 
things money will buy, or art supply, after all the 
sweetest thing will be their mother and her garden. 

You see now before you one whose children are 
all grown — but often waiting at the twilight hour, 
my thoughts fly far away back to my childhood's 
home — my mother's garden of poppies, and her 
boxwood rows, the lilacs I played beneath, and the 
huge walnut tree I swung under, all planted by her 
long since gone home to her heavenly rest. And 
so, as I leave you, it is with the wish that you will 
love nature, and from nature up to nature's God. 



ADDRESS. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR MOTHERS. 



In the mind of the average man and woman, 
with the recognition of a great need, there comes 
a desire that the need be met. Through years of 
earnest effort on the part of comparatively few per- 
sons the world is beginning to see the importance 
of the " Education of Mothers;" to realize that all 
the work of reform, of whatever nature, will never 
purify civilization, unless it begins at the fountain 
head. 

We cannot make over the ancestry of the world ; 
but we can make over ourselves, we can awake to 
the responsibility of parenthood, and with but little 
study it will be apparent that in the acknowledgment 
of the sacredness of such obligations, and a desire 
to discharge them, the race will gradually evolve 
from its present condition of discord into one of 
harmonious development. 

And it is because mother love has stood for all 
that is holiest and best, the most self-sacrificing in 
the history of the world, that I ask your attention 
this morning that I may tell you of some thoughts 
gathered at the Mother's Congress. 



Suggestions for Mothers. 85 

I believe that every good woman is a mother 
whether she has ever borne a child or not ; you see 
it in the early life of little girls, their fondness for 
their dolls; it matters not should they become crip- 
pled, all the closer you will find them nestled in 
their bosoms or sound asleep in their cribs. I have 
before me, in my mind, a doll of my own little girl's, 
who kept the lead as a favorite for a long time, less 
one eye, one arm, and one foot. Too often, my 
dear sisters, we give time and strength to things 
which are not essential, omit the superfluities, and 
there are so many ; the tucks in the white skirts, and 
dresses of the little ones, the hand-embroidered 
flannels, the fashionable calls; can any amount of 
daintiness and furbelows atone to a child for time 
which could be so much better spent on behalf of 
the child ; and can the most artistic fancy-work or 
the richest delicacy impart to any home the air of 
elevated thought and refinement which its possessor 
might bestow were her time distributed in more well- 
directed channels? 

Too often we see the young mother physically 
tired ; their lives, some of them, are devoid of that 
brightness which should be theirs, and in a dumb 
and satient way they are apt to regard themselves 
as outside of the world rather than in it; to such I 
would say, rouse yourself before it is too late, take 
short naps, eat good things and refresh yourselves, 
and soon will come a wholesome sense of importance 
and responsibility, which is a long stride toward 
self-culture, and will be quickly shown in the treat- 



86 Recollections of a "Busy Life. 

ment of your children, and in their own personali- 
ties. In an address by Frank Hamilton Cushing on 
" Mother and Child in the Primitive World," we 
were told the highest ideal of motherhood is to 
be found in Arizona, on the borders of New Mex- 
ico, in a tribe of Pueblo Indians; when the Indian 
mother first realizes her condition she is at once 
removed from her family, her cares, and every con- 
dition which might worry her, and is taken to a tent 
which is made beautiful by way of pretty things, 
such as pictures, statuary, and she is supplied with 
lovely things to eat, and as far as possible made 
entirely happy; she remains here for a season of two 
months, when the disposition of her child is said to 
be formed and she returns to her own tent. 

When her babe is born, if it is a girl it is laid 
on a little bed of white sand ; if a boy, on red, 
where it is kept as much as possible, allowing, of 
course, time for its care, and in this way it is taught 
submission ; at the end of ten days it has its ears 
pierced ; the point of the needle is placed on the 
tongue of the father, which makes it flesh and blood 
with him the same as the mother. The special care 
given the mother, the effects are very telling both in 
disposition and beauty of their children. 

We were also told of the mothers in the sub- 
merged world ; that what they most need is personal 
interest, to be taught how to live, how to prepare a 
comfortable meal at a small cost. A friend of mine 
was telling me of a visit to a tenement house ; she 
showed a poor woman how to make " split pea" 



Suggestions for Mothers. 87 

soup; upon her next visit every woman in that tene- 
ment house had made it. The mothers of the sub- 
merged world are most kind to each other, and I 
could tell you some facts which might make some 
of us blush for shame when we think of opportuni- 
ties wasted. And right here I w T ould mention, to 
be most careful of our reading matter; that almost 
in every room will be found the dime novel lying 
on the table, so great the thirst for something to 
read ; now could we supply this desire for pure cast- 
off literature from our own homes, and the dime 
novel would be a thing of the past. 

Anthony Comstock says, " If you mothers 
could but realize what impure literature meant for 
children, how much more watchful we would be of 
their reading." He paid us quite a compliment 
when he said there were two Houses of Congress 
sitting this morning in Washington, and he was 
happy to say he considered this the upper house. 
We were encouraged when our babes were small to 
be careful in selecting their food ; and that their 
clothing be made of light material; also personal 
cleanliness absolutely necessary, and that much of 
our baby's character is formed in the cradle. As 
the child grows older, to ask them to do little acts 
as favors, and to discourage at all times any display 
of authority, and keeping ourselves as much as pos- 
sible in touch with them, to avoid petty differences; 
that our interests are one. 

I will tell here the story of a child who came 
late in life to a Presbyterian clergyman and a wife 



88 Recollections of a 'Busy Life. 

who was the principal of a large boarding-school ; 
the great desire of the father was that the child 
should be holy, the mother, that it should be most 
correct. The home in which they lived fronted on 
a beautiful avenue and backed on a court. 

The mother assisted largely in the church work 
of the Parish ; at the same time the nurse would take 
the child, Robbie, to see the little boys play marbles 
on the back street ; soon he acquired the habit of 
swearing, much to the horror of the parents; the 
mother then applied the rules of the school to bear 
upon this boy, the father the teachings of his church, 
until they noticed, between the supperless nights, 
their beautiful boy was becoming a physical wreck. 
In the dilemma an old aunt arrives from the West 
and grasps the situation at once, and promises, if 
allowed the full care of the child, to erase this 
habit. She is bright and sweet in herself; she at 
once gains the love and confidence of this boy; she 
tells him her troubles, her weakness; that she, too, 
has said bad words, and in one of their outings they 
will select and buy a little pug dog, and the one who 
forgets and says a swear word forfeits the right to 
it. Upon going into the dining room the next 
morning, the smoking hot baked potatoes were, on 
the breakfast table, and as they were passed to 
Robbie, the aunt, with her accustomed care, said, 

11 Look out, Robbie, they are d d hot," when he 

threw up his little hands, and said, " Aunty, you have 
lost the dog," and so we are here again reminded of 
what human sympathy can do. 



Suggestions for Mothers. 89 

We are told through the writings of Dr. G. 
Stanley Hall, Massachusetts, to look well to the 
danger line, say from twelve to sixteen, and keep 
near your boys, watch out closely for hobbys, should 
it be the study of insects, animals, boats or books ; 
if it is respectable at all, join him with all the whole- 
hearted interest you can bring to his subject, and 
should you succeed in holding him from the age of 
twelve to sixteen, eight cases out of ten you will 
have a good man. It is a period of excitement, a 
time when he thinks he knows everything ; watch up 
well the bent of his mind; should it be books, he 
may wish you to instruct him in this line, and should 
you be too poor to buy them, seek the nearest 
library; if it be athletics, for temperance or forestry, 
identify yourself with it, but hold your boy until this 
period is over; watch well the books for both boys 
and girls ; remember the words of dear Margaret 
Sangster, that a bad book is worse than a burglar 
in your house ; and I would say here I have had 
most success in slipping in books I most wished my 
children to read on birthdays, when they do not 
have to ask for them. May I suggest the names of 
a few, " Stevenson's Child's Garden of Verses," 
11 Vanity Fair," Bartram's " Life of Johnson," 
Green's " History of America," Mrs. S. S. Robbin's 
books, Jacob Abbott's " Gentle Measures in Man- 
aging the Young," " Biography of Augusta Hare," 
this is the life of a child adopted by a family of 
adults to bring brightness into their home ; their 
efforts to raise her properly, the killing of her pets 



90 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

when she became too fond of them, that her love 
should not be taken from heavenly things; saddest 
child-life on record, especially recommended to 
children inclined to nag. And now and then an 
occasional novel may be sparingly recommended; 
to such I would refer Jean Ingelow's books; " Mar- 
garet Ogilvy," and " Sentimental Tommy," by J. 
M. Barrie. 

Do not forget, dear friends, to encourage little 
efforts. One of the sweetest thoughts that come 
to me in many a twilight hour, is the remembrance 
of a Valentine Day, when, neatly endorsed, came to 
me a little red feather; do you think for one moment 
I made fun of it? Oh, no ! as I entered the dining 
room, I said, " Thank you, sweetheart," and the 
happy look on that little face in answer, an inspira- 
tion, I hope, as long as I live. 

We are told by Mrs. Ballington Booth there 
are more people dying to-day for the want of sym- 
pathy than for the want of food ; that the mother 
who has her little home, and two or three darlings 
have come to bless it, will lay behind her the thought 
that is her work, that she cannot love those children 
so dearly unless remembering some other little one 
perhaps not far away. The little worn shoe, the 
cast away baby blanket, or the one-armed doll, that 
the rich mother will become stronger herself in the 
love for her own home, and the poor one for having 
been remembered. 

It is said to be true in Sing Sing prison, New 
York, a boy of fourteen became tired of working 



Suggestions to Mothers. 91 

on his father's farm, and being severely whipped by 
him, in a moment of anger ran away, became 
stranded in the city, took from his room-mate two 
dollars and a half, was railroaded to prison; he was 
placed on the fifth floor of the corridor overlooking 
the marble floor; every morning for two weeks, 
before eating his breakfast, he would run down to 
the janitor of the prison to see if his mother had 
been there; his cheeks began to pale, his health to 
break, and on the beginning of the third week, 
tired of life, he threw himself over the corridor 
to the marble floor below and was killed. 

My friends, as much as you love your husbands, 
and ought at all times to yield in small matters, 
because I think we bend more easily, but we sin 
against our Heavenly Father, when we do not de- 
velop within ourselves enough decision of character 
to stand firm at all times for that little darling 
which it has pleased God to give life to through our 
being, and now (I hear a whisper, how is a mother 
to prepare herself for this great work), I would 
answer, by keeping herself spotless before the 
world, not looking too much for what is bad ; to be 
a good feeder that she may be a good thinker ; to 
introduce in her household a system of living, not 
mechanical, but loving, by praising all that is good 
by encouraging a plainness of dress, quiet manner, 
a saving of labor. 

And now, in closing, my friends, do you think 
there is anything in this world so sweet, so beauti- 
ful, so rich an inheritance as a holy mother ? She 



92 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

may not have been beautiful by nature, her dressing 
may have been plain, but, oh! what a power of 
strength for us all concealed in that little form, and 
how often in the twilight hours will the mind fly 
away to its childhood home, her garden of poppies, 
the box-wood walk, the lilacs that we have played 
beneath, the walnut tree we have swung under — 
precious thought, a shield that will protect us until 
the end. 

All here have enjoyed a life the result of which 
shall last forever; then let our aim be a higher stan- 
dard of motherhood, which is a grander, nobler 
race, which will make heaven here upon earth. It 
means the elimination of selfishness, the death of 
oppression, the birth of brotherly love, and the 
building up of fine spiritual Christianity. 



APPEAL TO THE EDITORS OF THE 
STATE OF NEW JERSEY. 



Banksmere, Riverton, N. J. 
First Month, 14th, 1901. 
Some years since our present Governor sug- 
gested to me that I take up the work of organizing 
a State hospital for epileptics, as there seems to be 
no place in our State for the care of this afflicted 
class. 

The pressure of other work and interest has 
prevented me from undertaking so large a work, 
but I am assured that if the subject is given proper 
discussion by our State press, the attention of those 
of younger years and better able to cope with so 
large an undertaking will be attracted to it. 

Thanking all who may assist in this work, as we 
may never meet face to face in this our new century, 
when all wish for some new work to do for the Great 
Giver of all Good. 

Sincerely thy friend, 

Isabel E. Davis, 



UNITED STATES. 



OHIO. 



Grand Hotel, Cincinnati. 
We left home 22d of January, and our first 
stop was Washington, and our first call at the Arl- 
ington, on our esteemed co-worker, Mr. Pinchot, of 
the National Forestry Association. By invitation 
of Mr. Wm. Saunders, we were taken through the 
public conservatories and luxuriated for the first 
time on yellow strawberries and picked grape fruit; 
we then proceeded over to the House to listen to 
the bill introduced to require an official inspection 
of nursery stock, and were told the annual damage 
from insects to nursery stock in the United States, 
according to a petition presented to the Senate, is 
estimated to exceed three millions a year. The 
petition asks for a bill for the inspection of plants, 
trees, shrubs, commonly known as nursery stock. 
It also asks that no nursery stock from a foreign 
country be allowed to enter the country unless 
accompanied by a Government certificate. The bill 
also provides that any one delivering without this 
certificate can be fined or imprisoned. Foreign in- 
sects to blame, the State of California has estab- 



Letter from Ohio. 95 

lished a horticultural quarantine at San Francisco, 
and in the past year the quarantine officer destroyed 
over three thousand trees. The petitioners state 
further, that of the annual damage, aggregating 
three million dollars, from insects to the horticul- 
tural and agriculturist interests of this country, at 
least one-half is caused by imported insects. 

The immense amount of money lost in this 
country on account of injurious insects can be 
judged from the fact that a peach orchard of twenty 
thousand trees in Maryland was completely de- 
stroyed by the San Jose scale in two years. 

These difficulties can only be reached by a law 
governing interstate commerce, such as is now pro- 
posed. 

We leave Washington by the B. N. O. South- 
western, and the scenery, as you pass through the 
valleys and as you approach Harper's Ferry, is ex- 
quisite, and here one sees back of that old fort the 
monument erected to that dear old man, John 
Brown. And just above, the forests, if they had 
tongues what a tale they could reveal; many years 
stretch backward to the beginning of some of these 
hoary, moss-draped warders of the wood. 

Here are caverns whose rocky walls and roofs 
have echoed to the noises of the gun, one might 
fancy, and buried in their dismal depths the darkest 
of this continent's terrible secrets. Passing along 
in our car, in a voice louder than any words can 
speak, we see how poor Virginia is paying the 
penalty for her sin. The farmhouses are poor, with 



96 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

their shaken roofs and weather-stained sides, all out 
of plumb, as if bowing to the opposite tree across 
the way. And as we near the station, men, women 
and children, old, young, rich and poor alike, they 
bring with them baskets of fruit, crates of fowls 
and eggs. 

We arrive at Louisville, stop at the u Galt 
House," and at once notice the film of black dust 
pervading everywhere and on everything, from the 
soft coal. Price of hard coal $8.00 per ton. 

At once you are made to feel at home by the 
kind welcome of the people. We attended a recep- 
tion given for Bishop Dudley in honor of the 
twenty-fifth year of his work here; also a german, 
and are much surprised at the young ladies in the 
last figure carrying Confederate flags as favors. 

We then go to Frankfort, Kentucky, the unfor- 
tunate day that the Democrats take to unseat the 
Republican Governor, with three soldiers lying in 
the courtyard dead, and two dying. It is hardly 
necessary to say we concluded we would see the 
public buildings another time. The men were shot 
by some Republican soldiers; seven hundred brought 
down from the mountains to protect their Governor. 
If we have any temperance workers in waiting at 
home there is a large field awaiting them in Ken- 
tucky. 

Very enjoyable is the ride from Louisville to 
Cincinnati; small farms are the rule, and to a great 
extent the land is owned by those who till it. The 
ownership is a marked encouragement to industry, 



Letter from Ohio. 97 

and underneath all is the fact that the people are 
contented, the houses being small ; frequently you 
will see women on the byways or in the fallow fields 
watching the grazing sheep by the aid of a collie. 
And as we neared twilight one hears the tooting of 
the horns, the barn doors are opened, and from all 
directions come running the sheep from the hills. 
If only its people could be lifted above the inherited 
feudalism; life here is at its smallest value, the pistol 
always ready to settle family disputes, and it is left 
for the mother to teach her sons to protect, even 
with their lives, the supposed honor of her family, 
and it is the dire results of this teaching which 
has brought such disgrace and ruin to-day on Ken- 
tucky. 

We now pass over the beautiful Ohio, which, 
you remember, in the Civil War divided the South- 
ern and Northern States, and we pass into Cin- 
cinnati. 

We are always told that this town is a smoke- 
grimed city, and so it appeared to me when by 
chance we were invited to the home on East Walnut 
Hills by Rev. George Eastman, to dine and drive 
in beautiful Eden Park. The Ohio's side rises 
abruptly five hundred feet, and on the crest you 
seem in another world. Cincinnati works below 
and lives above, in beautiful suburbs, tree-planted 
avenues, beautiful houses. It was here we were in- 
vited to Mrs. Stephen Polk's to an afternoon tea, so 
novel in its way. I send it to the brides-to-be in 
Riverton. It was given for a very sweet girl by her 



98 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

best friends. There were forty at the tea. In the 
drawing-room, suspended from the chandelier, was 
a huge white silk umbrella completely covered with 
smilax and pink roses ; on the end was a large white 
satin bag, tied with ribbons with long ends. Now 
the engaged girl is brought in ; she pulls the long 
ribbons, and dropping down in a shower on her are 
forty handkerchiefs for her trousseau. This novel 
way of entertaining is called " Shower Teas." 
When you receive your invitation, neatly engraved 
in the corner will be the particular kind — handker- 
chief, linen, kitchen. 

Now, on our next outing we go to the Rook- 
wood Pottery on Mt. Adams ; it owes its being to 
the genius of a woman, Mrs. Storer, granddaughter 
of Longworth, the great vine culturer of the West. 
She began as a child painting china, with over-glaze 
colors, and an old German made a little oven for 
her to fire them in. At this time she was taken to 
the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876, and 
saw the Japanese displays, and became possessed 
with the idea of one day having a pottery all her 
own. To-day we find a huge plant ; see her Paris 
exhibit, which is now ready for the cases, in which 
are vase after vase valued at from one to five hun- 
dred dollars apiece ; she employs steadily forty 
artists, all Americans, save Thirayamadant, the one 
Japanese. No two pieces just alike. Of the two 
most beautiful to me one was a night-blooming cereus 
clinging to a great jar, the other a rush of countless 
fishes through the water deep down in the sea, by 



wetter from Tennessee. 99 

Valentien. The actual glaze of Rookwood is so 
smooth you find its softness when you lay it against 
your face. 

We now join our neighbors, the Biddies and 
Frishmuths, and again take our cars for New 
Orleans. 

TENNESSEE. 

MEMPHIS. 
We arrived at Memphis, a city of about seventy- 
five thousand inhabitants; it lies well into the Mis- 
sissippi river, and you are much surprised by the 
locality of the houses, the high places being allotted 
to the whites and the bayous to the colored. Right 
on the banks of the Mississippi, made gray by its 
profusion of cotton mills, stands a handsome brick 
and brownstone structure, devoted, as the carved 
words over the entrance indicate, to use as a boys' 
club. It looks very out of place by contrast ; it 
still lends a grace to a sordid neighborhood. It is 
in the fullest sense of the word a boys' club, with a 
noisy throng of little urchins for its patrons, its 
every beauty and convenience set aside for their ex- 
clusive use. It is the evening resort of about two 
thousand boys. It is a place where they find their 
opportunities for cleanliness and companionship. 
It contains baths, a swimming pool, a gymnasium, 
and a library of eighteen hundred volumes. It is 
called the Cossett Library. The principal industry 
here is lumber, and large tracts are being bought 
both by American and foreign syndicates, one 



100 Recollections of a 'Busy Life. 

German buying a tract for $1.50, selling at $3.50 ; 
the people becoming alarmed, have recently passed 
laws that no foreigner be allowed to make such 
deals. 

The city of Memphis, since the yellow fever 
scare of 1878, has had the city sewered on the 
Waring plan, and to-day have forty miles of sewer- 
age (no surface sewage permitted) and every week 
the whole city is flushed. 

LOUISIANA. 

We again take our cars, and leaving all traces 
of winter behind us, in the early gray of the morn- 
ing pull in at New Orleans, where the woods are 
filled with palms ; lemon trees and all the southern 
vegetables begin to appear, and it is along this road 
the way leads through market gardens and dairies. 

The park here contains one hundred and sixty 
acres, and the groves of live oaks are the envy and 
admiration of the tourists, the great green boughs 
throw back the sunlight, and the whispering leaves 
tell of a time when duels were fought just to show 
their art. 

The city has a fine botanical garden and agri- 
cultural experiment station. Sugar is the great 
staple here. Large refineries have been established, 
where one can see the methods of manufacturing 
from the cane to the developed sugar. Planters are 
trying to make "two blades of grass grow where 
one grew before," and they are finding out that the 
secret lies with themselves and not entirely in the 



Letter from Louisiana. 101 

soil. We next go out to Lake Pontchartrain. One 
sees here miniature Atlantic City in its scenic rail- 
roads, mystic swings. On Sunday we go to the 
French Cathedral. The graves are scattered along 
and form tortuous alleys, and we find one erected to 
General Claiborne, the first Governor of Louisiana. 
We then visit the American section. A monument 
erected by the Army of the Tennessee, of marble, 
chiseled by Doyle ; then Beauregard's tomb ; also 
Memorial Hall, where one sees the last suit of 
clothes worn by Jefferson Davis; also Margaret's 
tomb, when you ask " Who is so singled out among 
the brilliant women of New Orleans?" The answer 
seems as strange as Cinderella's fairy story. It 
seems while the wealthy women of New Orleans 
were in the grand parlors of St. Charles Hotel, a 
simple, plain-faced Irish girl was in the laundry at 
her daily work; from there she went into the baking 
business, when she was compelled to accept a bakery 
for debt. The business grew and grew into an 
'immense steam bakery right in the middle of the 
city, and she became a great factor in the commer- 
cial life of New Orleans. She endowed four asylums 
at her death. Infants', Old Men's, Old Women's 
and the Strangers' Rest, and on a tablet is written 
that, "The substance of her life was Charity, the 
spirit of it Truth, the end Peace, then Fame, then 
Immortality." We now visit the healing waters of 
St. Roch's Spring. Candles are always burning 
before the shrine. There is here a firmly-grounded 
belief that a prayer before this shrine for a husband 



102 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

never fails of a favorable answer. The soft breezes 
play among the willows here and make a soft re- 
quiem over the graves where the dead are sleeping. 

We now go to the horse show, which in reality 
proves to be the races. The Jockey Club is on 
Esplanade avenue. It occupies about five acres of 
ground. It is really one of the most attractive 
spots in New Orleans. It opens on a beautiful ter- 
race, a large mansion standing in the midst of a 
beautiful garden, roses, palms, and magnolia trees. 
Immediately adjoining are the Fair Grounds. These 
contain a race course, grand stand, capable of seat- 
ing eight thousand people. 

Horse racing here is under the auspices of the 
Louisiana Jockey Club, takes place annually, and 
lasts one hundred days, in which time the best horses 
and best jockeys participate, from all the States. 
There one meets the real aristocrats of New Orleans. 
The southern girls are beautiful, and their manners 
more so, but the pitiful part is their gambling. At 
the close of each race they are waited on by official 
messengers to show the amount they wish to put up, 
and they take these wagers as modestly as we would 
go to church. 

Next we go to the French Market and the old 
quarters, where slaves were brought from all sec- 
tions, to be sold at auction. We see the block on 
which they stood, at the corner of Esplanade and 
Chartres avenues. Both of these streets were known 
as slave quarters, and millions of dollars changed 
hands in this heathenish slave traffic. 



Letter from Texas. 103 

The inhabitants of these grim houses are most 
kind, and one feels you would like to leave with 
them everything you owned to atone for past 
wrongs. 

They seem to see the stranger in your eyes and 
smile graciously while, with a pretty air of mingled 
graciousness and reserve, they seem to say, " Look 
your fill." In most of these little courtyards will 
be found plants in huge pots, pomegranate trees, 
flowering shrubs, sometimes a battered bronze 
statue and big, old yellow earthen pots, as big 
as those in which Ali Baba hid on a certain occa- 
sion. 

Again we take our grip for boat across the 
Mississippi for Algiers, where we take the Southern 
Pacific for Corridonova Springs, through the most 
beautiful old Southern plantations. 

TEXAS. 

SAN ANTONIO. 

After a long ride through the submerged fields 
of Louisiana, we arrive in San Antonio. Here we 
find many invalids in this genial, health-giving 
atmosphere, which serves to make the winter months 
sources of delight, rather than a season to be 
dreaded. 

While the eastern, northern and middle sec- 
tions of the United States are shrouded in snow and 
ice, the visitor here revels in fruits, flowers and 
roses. A rainy afternoon, and I attend a lecture on 
the " New Woman." The first argument, war, 



104 Recollections of a 'Busy Life. 

the greatest friend to woman to have the liberty to 
labor, which was given to woman, it adds a greater 
power, a sweeter freedom, to love men and that 
dead men were safely to be loved. She is left alone 
— with the whole world before her and the inspira- 
tion of an adoring memory. 

Now in the audience we had a consumptive 
from Detroit, who solved this problem clearer to 
my mind, when he told us at the close of the lecture 
that he had lived two months on liquid food, that 
he was gaining flesh and that no amount of money 
should tempt him to return to his former method of 
living. 

This, to my mind, strikes at the root of oppres- 
sion of woman. It is not man's laws, but his three 
meals a day, that has placed obstructions in the way 
of her empire. 

It never was original sin, but the slavery of 
cooking that has kept woman where she is to-day. 
The question has not been what shall we do to be 
saved, but what shall we have for breakfast, dinner 
and tea. 

If a man can discover how to live without eat- 
ing, and will convert his friends, women then will 
have time to look about and decide just what part 
of the earth they want, and settling there, there will 
be no cook stove in the way of taking it. 

We see here such a fine aquarium, filled with 
native fish, in gorgeous hues, and on inquiry of the 
keeper I was told the swampy, muddy pool was 
filled with aquatic plants, which give off the required 



Letter from Texas. 105 

oxygen, which the fish must have to keep them 
alive. 

This was a solution of how to keep fish in an 
aquarium. In this pool were snails and tadpoles, 
who acted as scavengers. It was edged with water- 
poppies, as well as some tiny surface plants with 
little rootlets. They were fed on rice-flake food and 
seemed to know the feeding hour. 

On a beautiful morning we go to the Govern- 
ment Barracks, the finest along the route, beautifully 
housed, about ten acres, shaded with pigeon berry 
trees. Fifteen hundred men in the grounds attend 
the drill. Everywhere sombreros begin to appear. 
There seems to be no poor here, even the colored, 
who are part Creole, ride in carriages. It is a rich 
agricultural district, many sheep, much wool and 
some cotton. We see here the Turner stockyard, 
where Roosevelt started with his Rough Riders for 
Santiago. We visit here the Alamo, the inscription 
on the front was, "Thermopylae had her messenger 
of defeat, but the Alamo had none." We now take 
our cars for El Paso, Texas. 

Certainly we are now passing by the most ster- 
ile portion of the most hopeless waste in America. 
On either hand lies a dreary stretch of sand and 
stone, relieved only by the mountains, a desert un- 
marked by a single habitation outside the lonely 
path of the locomotive. Through this our train 
hastens to a more fertile land and little spots of 
green grass begin to appear; the pigeons on the 
hill and the cowboys with their horses, and after 



106 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

two days and nights we reach El Paso. Here we 
visit the Cathedral (all Catholic here), in Mexico, 
we are over the line. The Madonna is in street 
dress, holding in her hand an exquisite handker- 
chief. We visit the ring where the bull fights are 
held every Saturday; we visit the " Irrigation 
Farms," from which our steward refreshes his larder 
with delicious vegetables ; we again take our cars. 
We pass such exquisite cactus and papagos, which 
begin to appear as we enter Arizona, coming into 
Tucson. We go direct to the Tucson School. Our 
work here is great, but it ought to be greater. 
Here we find five hundred children, boys and girls. 
The girls are taught to keep their own rooms clean 
and tidy, also all departments of housekeeping. 
The boys are taught the care of stock, how to plant, 
cultivate, harvest, properly house and market the 
various products of the farm, how to use tools so 
that they may erect and repair their own homes and 
barns. 

How my heart goes out to these poor papagos, 
there is plenty of land, but the old story, the white 
man wants the water, and taps the courses above 
their reservation. 

We are now within four hundred miles of El 
Paso, leaving behind the Rio Grande, on the other 
side is Mexico ; we pass over the bridge across the 
Pecos river, the third highest in the world, the 
Firth of Forth, Andes and then this one, marked 
four thousand, two hundred and seventy-two feet 
above the ocean ; cold winds begin to come, when 



Letter from Texas. 107 

nothing you have is too warm to put on, and look- 
ing up you see the Saddleback Mountains, covered 
with snow. Our car stops, there is a wreck ahead ; 
it will be four hours before we can move on. We 
visit a Mexican home. It is one story, terrace form, 
two rooms, entrance by means of a ladder, built of 
stone and covered with adobe cement. Beneath 
this little roof were garnered priceless treasures of 
that ancient time, faded pictures of saints painted 
on skins, figures carved in wood to shadow the 
Madonna. The Mexican is brave, honest and 
enterprising in a way, has made his wife a little 
oven, for roasting ; out of cans thrown from the 
cars, the name of his house is written out in large 
letters by using the tops which, pressed into the 
ground, look like large silver dollars. My linguist 
on this occasion is a cowboy from Missouri. They 
live principally upon what they can trap, but always 
have in reserve a barrel of beans and bag of coffee. 
The country here is a land of broad ranges, where 
hundreds of thousands of sleek cattle and flocks 
of sheep browse on the grasses, the land of the mes- 
quite and sage, where one sees here and there an 
Indian gathering his wood for the manufacture of 
paper, and you and I can best tell why we find them 
in this denuded condition, and here the reddish- 
brown prairie dogs appear to have no home but the 
forest. 

The Pecos Indians have only game for a living, 
and the government stands by and sees this indus- 
trious tribe reduced well-nigh to starvation. All 



108 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

through the cars and the dining-room I hear the 
Indian spoken of as the " ward of the nation," not 
permitted even to go off their reservations. We 
are a people who have our doors standing wide 
open to every quarter of the globe, to invite the 
offscourings of the earth to a full partnership with 
this republic. What part of that history will we 
not weep over? Are we giving to those poor people 
who held the whole country by a title too strong 
and old to be investigated, and too divine to be dis- 
regarded ? 

When we leave the Southern Pacific to take the 
Santa Fe railroad, and go through the cars, I dis- 
cover an odor such as leads one to suppose that we 
had a hot box. On inquiry I learn that here they 
run the engines by petroleum. This train has taken 
us, by seductive windings, and we at last find our- 
selves in the gardens of California. We have time 
to drive through the Smyley Gardens of Mohawk 
Farm. On either hand at once appear orchards of 
peaches, apricots, prunes, olives, figs, almonds, wal- 
nuts and oranges. 

We leave Tucson for Redlands, across the 
Yuma desert, and we are snatched in a single min- 
ute from every accustomed anchorage. The stout- 
est heart here quivers ; we have passed through a 
storm of sand, and in the night, looking out of my 
window, I see just beyond the Colorado river, what 
looks to me like a huge cemetery, and I wonder 
where all the dead come from. In the early gray of 
the morning I discover in the Yuma desert huge 



Letter from California. 109 

cactus, some as high as twenty feet, grown in shapes 
much the same as the monuments at home. On 
going into the dining-room, the gentleman who sat 
opposite asked if I knew we had three trained In- 
dians to help us up the mountain last night. He 
was Scotch. I looked at him and said : " What, has 
it come to this?" When he said: " You have mis- 
understood ; engines, I said." We have now reached 
the Redlands. 

CALIFORNIA. 

CORONADO BEACH. 

Here we are right well ; our location is right on 
the Pacific Ocean, which is the color of robin's 
blue, the air dry and a climate which has no equal. 
I wish to speak with entire frankness, for I am sure 
that what so pleases me will suit a great number of 
people. Any person will be safe at any time to come 
here, sick or well. Of course much is due to artifi- 
cial conditions. 

Such is our hotel, just think of it, a dining- 
room with ten thousand square feet of floor, all 
hard wood and red cedar. The grounds cover in 
the rear twenty acres in lawn, with a front on the 
beach and near the sea. 

The sound of the beating surf is perpetual. 
Its broad piazzas invite you to linger, and I found 
no other place where I had the feeling of absolute 
content and a willingness to stay. The gardens 
look carpeted with the rarest flowers. Here we 
have the ocean fishing in plain sight, quail and rab- 



110 Recollections of a 'Busy Life. 

bit in abundance, the ostrich farm, the Coronado 
golf links, with the broad Pacific on one side, San 
Diego bay on the other, and the entertainments at 
the club-house are free to the guests of the hotel. 
The drinking water comes from living springs and 
all the ice used at the hotel is made right on the 
grounds. 

In bathing the dogs to-day it was most amusing 
to see a lot of monkeys rush upon the rear one, 
when the keeper of the kennels lassoed them, and 
one immediately ran up on the veranda and grabbed 
the whisk out of a lady's hand, who was brushing 
her clothes, and began to clean himself up. 

We now go to Riverside, the great orange dis- 
trict, I believe the greatest in California, and drive 
up the famous avenues of magnolia and palm, a dis- 
tance of twenty miles on asphalt through orange 
groves, and we understand for the first time what 
irrigation means to the agriculturist, and here we 
also see the great alfalfa growing on the lowlands, 
which are not fit for fruit. No other plant will sup- 
port so many cows to the acre. It is fed green, also 
as hay. When there is plenty of water it can be cut 
six times a year. 

We also visit the Victoria section, six thousand 
acres bought by an English syndicate for $1.50 an 
acre, who farm entirely by irrigation — artesian wells, 
the ten year old trees of the navel orange now 
worth $400 an acre. 

We now go to Redlands and see the great trees, 
and to call on our friend, Mr. Smyley, of Mohawk 



Letter from California. Ill 

fame, so kind as to come back to our carriage laden 
with oranges and roses. Noticed all the terracing 
around his house, edged with calla lilies, and ask 
him if he is so fond of them, when I am told they 
absorb all, if there should be anything malarious in 
the air. 

Don't for one moment think that this whole 
land is a jungle of orange and palm trees, parted 
only by thick banks of flowers. California is large, 
and these celebrated places lie in restricted areas of 
cultivation, which all tourists are expected to visit, 
as herein lies their pride. But there still remains a 
chance for the new comer. There is everything in 
California that has been credited to it. But one 
must remember the flowers here are not eternal, 
save in the watered gardens. That in the dry sum- 
mer season the hills turn brown and sleep. To 
come out here and make a new home there is work 
to be done, rough work, finding in the products of 
the soil so much to overcome, water scarce, the iso- 
lation of friends, the making of new ties. No, 
give me every time, with land the price it is at home, 
the farming regions of the East, and the uplifting 
of the environments of home. 

SANTA MONICA. 

It would seem that nature had foreseen that in 
going to San Francisco, the tourist would at times 
feel the need of some fair spot to recuperate in, and 
had created Santa Monica for that purpose. 

There is peace in the air there, and the soft 



112 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

break of the waters upon the sand will soon woo 
the eyelids of the tired travelers, as does the mother's 
lullaby to the babe on her lap. 

We visit here the Soldiers' Home, and Govern- 
ment Horticultural Station. At this hotel we find 
many English. The hotel is built on the very edge 
of the sea. The side of the hotel facing the ocean 
contains observatories enclosed with glass, which 
makes a most commodious dining room (the service 
is white Haviland china). It faces the ocean and 
through the large windows one can sit and gaze on 
ever shifting waves of the boundless Pacific, while 
refreshing the inner man. 

In coming back to our hotel we pass a forest 
completely given over to gray squirrels, and it was 
very cute, indeed, to see so many of them sit up 
and watch the train go by. In this forest were some 
very rare tropical productions. 

The next stop is at the home of Mrs. Jessie 
Fremont. You remember the one given her by the 
state of California. In her gardens we find cacti 
palms one hundred years old, and the dear old lady 
herself, sweet and pleasant as she could be, now in 
her eighty-third year. A little puflf of wind and I 
caught the odor of rose geraniums, and looking, 
saw a bush that had grown as high as the second 
story. 

In coming back to our hotel we pass the Los 
Angeles river, a bed of stone down deep in the val- 
ley, and you ask yourself the question, u How can 
a people build a town of this size — one hundred 



Letter from California. 113 

thousand inhabitants — hundreds of miles of electric 
railroads, electric lighting, macadamized streets, 
libraries, schools, university, and allow their one and 
only river to become denuded of its water sheds, 
due to forest destruction?" Just think of it, the 
carelessness of one man in the mountains destroy- 
ing the valuable property and the means of live- 
lihood of thousands of people in the beautiful 
valley below! 

And yet the work of destruction is allowed to 
go on. This being the thirtieth river I have seen 
entirely dried up since leaving New Orleans. No 
matter in what way I turn, the fact stares me in the 
face, that the best and most valuable forests are fast 
disappearing, and the sooner we begin to spare the 
young timber the better it will be for us and for 
future generations. 

In Tuolumne County the Crocker estate have 
put the narrow gauge railroad with its saw mill into 
a sugar pine forest forty miles square, which will 
entirely finish this kind. 

I wish I could write some word in this letter 
which would arouse to a full sense of duty our ob- 
ligations to the forest demands of our own State, 
and to our own Forestry Association, and bring to 
ourselves the full importance of the momentous 
question. 

It certainly cannot be with all the lessons we 
have had, that we will prove unworthy of that pub- 
lic-spirited ancestry, and live solely for ourselves. 
We have inherited a forest for all time. Let us, 



114 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

then, generously pass it on, after having our full 
share and use and improvement to our children and 
our children's children, unto all generations. 

We now take our trolley for Pasadena through 
groves and rose bowers, under mountains tipped 
with snow. Along this line we find many Eastern 
people who have regular winter homes. Much 
wealth is here, and now we pass through Lucky 
Baldwin's ranch of six hundred acres, with its great 
wineries, orchards and horse training grounds. 

This locality is celebrated for its oranges, and 
still more orange fields odorous with the bloom of 
them, and at last we reach, in the twilight, the little 
city overshadowed by a mountain, Pasadena. 

The darkness falls quickly. You are tired now, 
and close your eyes a moment, but you are awak- 
ened by a tourist, with an exclamation of wonder, 
and you look around to find the mountain flooded 
with moonlight. 

And now the ruddy light of our hotel stands 
hospitable before us, and our journey is again ended. 

LOS ANGELES. 

A beautiful morning this, the 16th of February, 
and we take our first bath in the Pacific Ocean, so 
unlike the Atlantic, as you cannot detect the least 
salt odor arising from it. We then go to the " Os- 
trich Farm," which took in $87,000 at the World's 
Fair, and we see birds ranging from newly hatched 
chicks to old birds ten and twelve years old. The 
feathers are taken every nine months. Only those 



Letter from California. 115 

on the wing and tail are cut off. The body feathers 
are left to be shed and then gathered up. The sell- 
ing price of a full-grown bird is $35.00, and they 
are for sale on this farm. 

Coming in for dinner, preparatory to going to 
our train, my friend across the corridor has a call. 
I go down to the parlor, and on her return she finds 
all the corks removed and taken away from her med- 
icine chest, the feather from her bonnet and one of 
her gloves by a monkey. 

We now start for Los Angeles, keeping right 
along the Pacific Coast on one side ; on the other 
we pass many frame houses, covered by flowers or 
creeping vines. 

There is a great variety of fruit trees, palms and 
shrubs (remember, all green in this climate adds 
greatly to the beauty of the dwellings). We pass by 
two ranches owned by New York bankers who have 
winter homes here, also Madame Modjeska's. I 
notice the cereals here are grown on the hills with- 
out irrigation. 

One thousand acres in one field without even a 
fence or road of any kind passing through it. After 
ripening they harvest in the most economic manner 
with extensive machinery. 

The train stops for the tourist to view San Juan 
Mission, 1737, right under the San Jacinto Moun- 
tain, where there is chiseled in stone two donkeys, 
on which I read this inscription, "When shall we 
three meet again?" 

We arrive at Los Angeles, and are most pleas- 



116 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

ed to meet, in the corridor of our hotel, Mr. 
George Roberts. Delicious strawberries, a beauti- 
ful town and many beautiful charities, prominent are 
the Red Cross, Home for the Aged, Women's 
Christian Association, Women's Club House, one 
of the finest buildings here, and fine parks. 

We now drive through Palm avenue to Elysian 
Park, three hundred acres. It is located among the 
fragrant hills in the city, around which the river 
winds, where it drops out of sight in its sandy bed 
like so many rivers in this country. 

There we see the monkey tree, the Australian 
pepper tree and the fresh water lakes with their 
black bass Now the fish dart from side to side, 
tearing the water into a foam, leaving a sheet of 
bubbles. In it comes once more, fighting hard to 
get away from the angler. There are to be found 
here a city of tents, under ideal conditions for 
camping out. 

SANTA BARBARA. 

The Eden of Paradise. There has just been 
consummated here the purchase of thirty-five hun- 
dred acres of mountain lands in the Santa Ynez 
range, for purposes of water conservation. A tun- 
nel will be built three and a half miles to supply the 
water. This came about through the results of a 
fire, at which they were obliged to use forty-five 
thousand gallons of wine on a winery in the absence 
of water. 

Last night there was a very severe sand storm 



Letter from California. 117 

here which lasted six hours, with such force that it 
required two men at the hotel to close the front 
door. 

We now start for the Hot Springs, and enter 
the woods, as usual, a belt of hard woods, oaks, elms, 
birches along the ocean front, nature having selected 
the fittest to protect the shore from storms blowing 
across the ocean which, with unbroken force, had 
uprooted even some of them. 

A look at the big hole caused by the wind tear- 
ing out a tree allows one to judge of the soil, and I 
could understand as I never could before how ten 
Chinamen, who make the most of every inch of 
ground, can live here on two acres. 

It is restful here to the tourist, the absence of 
dust, so much sea fog. We stop at the ranch of Dr. 
Starks, and see his cowboys, on horses, bathe five 
hundred cows in the Pacific. We visit the old fish- 
erman to see the black pelicans, and are told they 
have had no rain for two years. 

We visit by invitation a curio shop, and see a 
table just ready to be shipped, the top of which is 
made of thirty-five different varieties of wood ; then 
to Santa Barbara Mission, erected in 1748, kept in 
a beautiful condition. In the altar is the figure of 
this Saint, exquisitely carved in marble, considered 
one of the finest pieces in the State. 

We now stop at Hot Springs, one of which is 
boiling, one arsenic and one magnesia, and we now 
look over Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa. These 
islands, which were once populated by a primitive 



118 Recollections of a 'Busy Life. 

people, whose burial mounds you can yet see, are 
now only inhabited by sheep herders, who tend 
flocks of many thousand sheep. 

Coming down to the shore of the Pacific, there 
comes right out of the sand a flow of oil, where 
thousands of gallons are being taken out. It is 
carried in little by little by a submarine valley 
indicating a probable discharge from an ocean oil 
field. 

We now leave Santa Barbara, but no longer 
through flat, dry sands, but through vast wheat fields 
and fertile valleys, rivers again appearing, and widen- 
ing meadows sloping down to the inlet of the sea, 
whose winding shore leads to Oakland pier. 

Here a ferry crosses to San Francisco, and we 
are much amused at the sea gulls, who will catch a 
cracker as it is thrown into the bay. As we come 
into the city we are at once struck with this city of 
hills, its fine looking ladies and huge men. 

SAN FRANCISCO. 

We proceed at once to the Palace Hotel, which 
cost $1,000,000 to build. It is wainscoated with onyx 
— a grand hotel, and one in which you can live in 
five different ways. 

It is morning now, and the winds from the hills 
are softly spreading on the air, and the sun is 
shining from a cloudless sky, and our friend, Mr. 
Fox, calls and takes us to drive along the shores of 
the Pacific. Again we come upon a little town of 
houses made of old trolley cars. They are the 



Letter from California. 119 

homes of the fishermen and shell gatherers. Fish 
cut open and spread out flatly were drying here and 
there in the sun. Nets were draped from the roofs, 
baskets of odd design, often attractive, were strewn 
about on the ground, and coming near, a woman 
with a tray of shells; we pass the mining home of 
Mackay, a cabin of one room, the palatial homes of 
Phoebe Hearst, Spreckles and others. 

To the Sutro baths, the largest in the world; 
Mint the same; Hibernian Saving Fund, capital, 
$4,000,000; then to the park— Golden Gate— five 
hundred acres. Notice at once the edging of the 
beds of strawberries and violets, of which any one 
is allowed to pick from path. We visit the museum, 
Egyptian in architecture, beautiful to look at, the 
Japanese tea-garden, where we see a grove of camelias, 
and many trumpet and monkey trees. 

In driving up the mountain to the Panorama 
Observatory, we pass on the edge of a hill over- 
looking a lake, a beautiful granite cross, erected in 
memory of Sir Thomas Drake, by our townsman, 
George W. Child s. He built better than he knew, 
as my friends told me. It is always spoken of as the 
Childs Monument. 

Handsome horses and fine turnouts in this 
park; many teams of six and eight horses, and a 
great many ladies and gentlemen on horseback 
coming home. We pass many beautiful charities, 
among which was one I wish we could have in Phila- 
delphia. The Foundlings' Home, a large and beau- 
tiful building, the entrance to which is built in the 



120 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

shape of a tunnel. The further you go in the 
darker it gets. At the entrance end is a low light 
burning, a basket cradle with a blanket in it. The 
mother can take her babe in, she will not be dis- 
turbed nor questioned, cover up the child, pull the 
bell and go away. A trained nurse answers that bell 
and takes that babe, which is ever a ward of the city 
of San Francisco. 

We now return home for dinner, after which we 
are taken through Chinatown. 

A few steps from our hotel and we at once come 
to this city. It is night, and under the soft glow 
of paper lanterns, and through the gloom of un- 
lighted alleys weaves an Oriental throng. The scene 
is the real Chinaman at home, and so in the space of 
a very few minutes you become a foreigner in your 
own land. 

It is a jumble of peep-shows, shoemakers, bar- 
bers, apothecaries, whose only medicine is made of 
insects and herbs, of gold workers who heat their 
precious metal in sealing wax, fruit venders, who 
live and sleep in boxes just above their stands, readers 
of the Book of Fate in rich temples. 

The joss houses are hung with gilt carvings and 
costly draperies. Their gods are sitting on the 
shrines with tea before them, being absorbed and 
taken up by the air. The poor creatures think they 
drink it. We see the furnace the devils are burnt 
in. We next visit the theatre, and are seated on 
the stage. In looking down on the audience, the 
house is full. The faces even here are sad. In the 



Letter from California. 121 

gallery are the ladies in full dress. The play begins 
at five and lasts until eleven (most noticeable here 
is an absence of all eyeglasses). Now there are no 
ladies allowed to act on the stage, and the actor 
who can best imitate a lady receives the highest 
salary. 

We next passed through a street of club houses, 
which are fine-appearing. Each window is netted 
down, beautiful and costly entrances. Over the 
doors one sees the names of literary clubs, Golden 
State, Merchants'. Admittance to either requires 
a key. 

These clubs are really gambling houses, and 
have copied in this manner after rich Californian 
clubs. 

Our next visit is to one of their restaurants, 
where a party of seventy-five are having dinner at 
round tables, gentlemen sitting and ladies standing 
behind, food being passed by the former to the lat- 
ter in such kinds or quantities as is approved by 
them. China exquisite and everything immacu- 
late. 

We now go to the home of a family of twenty- 
nine small children, living in one room; the feet 
small, and are told that after the age of twenty they 
cease to hurt, and will of themselves grow small. 

Now I would like to tell you that in San Fran- 
cisco there are in six blocks seventeen thousand 
Chinese. Three thousand eight hundred are lodged 
each night in one building, which used to be the old 
Globe Hotel. 



122 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

And now we go to the den of the opium 
smoker, stretched out on their bunks in a hot 
atmosphere heavy with sickening smoke and fumes, 
and let us here draw the veil. The Chinaman is 
kind, even in his losses; he^is patient, and his dens 
of deepest horror are silent, and who can tell how 
much has been inherited. 

And right here now, before I write another 
word, I wish to take back every unkind word or 
thought which I may ever have thoughtlessly said or 
spoken of the Salvation Army. All along have I 
seen their good work amongst the coal heavers of 
Cincinnati, the slums of New Orleans, and here, 
speaking the language of the Chinese, with their 
mission side by side with those still fair and inno- 
cent of face, despite unutterable wrongs. 

Such is Chinatown. One brings away in last- 
ing memory of three hours of peering, entering, 
ascending and descending, glad to reach the fresh 
air and be in the outside world again ; and yet, with 
all of our boasted civilization and environment could 
we in our large cities, at a moment's notice, unbare 
our innermost domestic life and have it inspected 
by the curious ? 

Another beautiful morning, and in company 
with our friend we take a trip to the military prison 
across the bay. On board we have fifty-five prison- 
ers for deserting, with the letter " P " in red stamped 
on their coat and trousers, and a red band on their 
hats. We meet such a dear boy from the mission 
who has run away from home, sick enough to die. 



Letter from California. 123 

We meet, coming home from Manila, the 
steamer Hancock, with five hundred dead on board. 
Coming in, we again take our carriage and go to 
the Presidio, which is a government tract of fifteen 
thousand acres, overlooking the Golden Gate. It 
is well forested and high up on the hills, overlook- 
ing the Gate, which is one-quarter of a mile wide. 
One hundred guns are stationed at intervals in bomb 
proof turrets, raised by electricity to fire off. 

The trees well conceal this great city of tents. 
No kodaks allowed here. The barracks here have 
been largely used by our government for her troops, 
horses and provisions, to take ship for Manila, which 
take down the men and provisions and bring back 
the wounded and dead. 

And on through a winding road and up a beau- 
tiful avenue of trees, on the ocean side just beyond 
the reach of the waves, and on the side of the hills 
is another home, with six hundred new-made graves 
awaiting. Standing there beside those dear boys' 
graves, and thinking of those far-away tears which 
had been shed for them, my heart is touched, and I 
ask myself this question, " How long, how long?" 

We have a country upon which God has seen 
fit to shower his choicest blessings. We maintain 
an army, a navy, an administration, a foreign service, 
and why cannot we lift our voices for arbitration, 
even though it should be, financially, some loss. 

We can, if we would, and show the world a 
nation who has put aside war, this relic of barbarism, 
and whose olive branch is Peace. 



124 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

COLORADO. 

DENVER. 

We went by train at eight o'clock from San 
Jose to Palo Alto (height of a big tree) again to 
see the Leland Stanford University, the most won- 
derful memorial I ever saw. Palo Alto : — There are 
eighty-two hundred acres of land belonging to it; 
one ranch fifty-five thousand, one thirty-three thou- 
sand, and two of six thousand, one winery and stock 
farm all deeded to it. Mr. Stanford is said to have 
the largest grant of land ever made to one person 
by this Government. 

The endowment to this university was $20,000,- 
000. The son died in Florence, Italy, of Roman 
fever, aged sixteen. It was opened to pupils in 
1891. It now has fourteen hundred pupils; will, 
when finished, accommodate five thousand. The 
chapel is to cost $400,000, and the plans for the 
buildings are ideal. 

The grounds are not kept up at all, as Mrs. 
Stanford will not permit a single bill paid which is 
not absolutely necessary, as she is particularly anx- 
ious to complete the buildings during her life-time. 
She is now seventy-one years of age. So economi- 
cal is she, that each morning her violets, roses and 
fine fruits are picked and shipped to San Fran- 
cisco market for the benefit of the university. 

We find here three hundred varieties of trees, 
planted by friends familiar to us all — U. S. Grant, 
Francis Willard and others. 



Letter from Colorado. 125 

On the grounds is a very handsome museum, 
which is really a family one, of their son's toys, 
his clothes, Mr. Stanford's war relics, her laces 
and foreign curios. The whole place is exceedingly 
pathetic, showing as it does the adoration for this 
son. In three fine religious pictures, his face is 
among the angels, ruining, artistically, the pictures. 

On our way to Oakland we pass through the 
Chinese Cemetery, and notice at once the absence of 
all marble, and the names written in raised letters 
of flowers, and on the banks, " Homes of Peace," 
41 Hills of Eternity." 

We leave by the Ogden Route, Rio Grande 
Central Pacific, through sugar beet plantations, 
English syndicate seed ranch, passing through one 
hundred acres of sweet peas in bloom, and you will 
please remember our thermometer at eighty, car 
windows all up, and it is now eleven o'clock; there 
is quite a stir in the car. We are passing a large 
mustard field, yellow with bloom, and a drove of 
black shining pigs in it. 

On through roads so quaint and pleasant, we 
pass over the Sacramento River where, mirrored on 
its surface, we see the tangled shrubbery of the 
madrona manzanita. 

Passing through the famous New Castle fruit 
ranches, said to supply two-fifths of the fruit now 
shipped from California, on either side of the road 
are seas of pink and white bloom from the cher- 
ries and apricots, and the air heavy with the per- 
fume. 



126 Recollections of a "Busy Life. 

It is now two o'clock, and we here bid farewell 
to the California poppies, babies' blue eyes, and the 
roses we enjoyed so much, and we pass through 
miles of canals, and you feel there is bread for all, 
and we shall not want. 

On, on, up, and by the help of an extra engine 
we pass into a forest of pine, where hydraulic mining 
is being done. The water is brought from the 
springs and carried in wooden troughs or sluices, 
of great power, eventually brought into pipes and 
turned on any desirable piece of ground, the gold 
remaining. The hills are dotted with camps. 

Our conductor now calls out " Cape Horn," 
and a stop of five minutes. I stood upon the side 
of this mountain by the grave of an Indian chief, 
who I read had perished there. We will leave him 
there to his rest. 

The invigorating air is filled with the scent of 
the water-beaten rocks, and from the forests in 
their loveliness resinous odors of pine, yuba and 
the hemlock, and as 1 take my car, above the whistle 
of the engine do I hear the trill of the lark. Our 
next stop is at Summit, and coming out of our 
apartment to go to dinner, I find Bess covered with 
snow, which had been thrown at her. May I tell 
you it is nine feet deep, and we are ploughing our 
way through the snow sheds — eight o'clock. 

At nine we enter Mystic, the State line, and 
leave California, which has been so kind to us, and 
enter Nevada, and for one day are we in this desert 
of sand and wild sage, with here and there a little hut, 



Letter from Colorado. 127 

and you wonder what they live on. They live on the 
manufacture of bicarbonate of soda taken from the 
sand, the game they trap — coyotes — and passing 
them by, you feel a sigh at leaving them here. Yet 
who would not prefer it to a life in the slums, with 
a never-ending rent roll hanging over one's head. 

We pass out of Nevada desert and into the 
beautiful Humboldt Valley, Uintah Mountains, cele- 
brated for its cattle ranches, from where millions of 
cattle are shipped yearly. We now pass into Utah, 
and follow along the Warsage Mountains, covered 
with snow, and Indian huts begin to appear. We 
have now left behind us all traces of the golden and 
silvery soil. 

Salt Lake City, often called " The City of Zion," 
is just at the foot of Wasatch Mountain; the streets 
are wide, bordered with shade trees. Along each 
side of the street is a clean, cold stream of water, 
from the mountain, which gives the city an air of 
coolness. 

We go to the Tabernacle and hear the great 
organ and choir of five hundred voices. It seats eight 
thousand ; built of granite, at a cost of $10,000,000. 
A handsome figure resting on the dome, represents 
an angel giving the commandments to Joseph Smith. 
Right opposite are the Tithing stores, where each 
Mormon had to leave one-tenth of what he made for 
the support of the church. 

Also Brigham Young's school for his family, 
seats for three hundred; we see his homes: Iron 
Bee Hive, Gardo Houses, the home of Amelia Fol- 



128 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

som. But owing to an energetic u Board of Trade," 
his reign is over here. The buildings remind me 
much of Napoleon's in Paris. 

We visit Salt Lake, Garfield Beach, you rest on 
its waves your body, and you float away to your 
heart's content. You cannot sink; it is really the 
Dead Sea of America. We visit the Hot Springs, 
nature's furnaces burning over all the time; notice 
many eczema and rheumatic patients. 

We come home by the thirteen-mile drive, and 
pass the palatial homes of the Irish millionaires 
(miners), fine Cathedral, Christian Science, Jewish 
Synagogue, and all the issues the West is so cele- 
brated for. 

We leave Salt Lake for Denver, and notice 
along many valuable deposits of guano and many 
gas wells which are piped into Salt Lake for both 
lighting and heating purposes. We now pass over 
the historic Jordan river, and our first stop is Glen- 
wood Springs. Two hours allowed for a bath in a 
pool of natural salt, hot water, and drink from the 
boiling springs much the same as clam broth. 

A most picturesque and weird scene follows. 
We pass through Egyptian canons, gypsum lava 
beds; beautiful scenery here. Miners' cabins dot 
the mountain sides, and the canons widen to a 
beautiful valley. We pass through Fremont's Tun- 
nel, and up through the " City of Clouds." Miners 
and smelters everywhere ; here the Ben Butler Mine 
and United States Fish Hatchery. 

We are now at a height of 11,330 feet above 



Letter from Colorado. 129 

• 
the sea, and you are breathing a little hard (don't 
bring any one this way sick). We now pass 
into Tennessee Pass, one of the highest in North 
America. 

Our car pulls in at Salida, and we remain on 
board for the night, when we are called upon by a 
committee and invited to be their guests for the 
miners' ball for the benefit of the Holy Cross Hos- 
pital.* The next morning, in going into our dining- 
room car, we find pinned on our menu a bright 
green ribbon, a souvenir of St. Patrick's Day. Little 
courtesies of this kind do much to brighten a tourist 
when so many miles from home. 

Now, following side by side the Arkansas river, 
you come to the Royal Gorge through varying 
scenery of broad scope, and you find yourself being 
closed upon, little by little, until you are in the 
narrow jaws of the Royal Gorge, thousands of feet 
high; and right through this gorge where the rush- 
ing, warring waters of the Arkansas river battles for 
room your train carries you, and the grandeur of 
the overhanging cliffs is one of the most awe- 
inspiring. 

Our next stop is Colorado Springs. Great sani- 
tarium for consumptives, beautiful streets, and such 
a perfect hotel, very fashionable, and the home of 
many millionaires; and near here is the " Garden of 
the Gods," filled with huge monoliths carved 
by nature from red sandstone into myriads of 
shapes. 

I cannot say too much in praise of Mr. Fred 



130 Recollections of a Busy Life. 

Jones, of Boston, our conductor of this Raymond 
trip, at all times most gentlemanly and kind. Our 
next stop is Dsnver, a city which gives great promise 
for the future of Colorado, a State the possibilities 
of which are absolutely limitless. 

And now, in closing, this being my last letter, 
I have sometimes felt our ladies at home lived too 
much in the literary world, and not enough in 
nature's, but I wish now I had graduated in all our 
colleges, so feeble is this hand, so tiring this pen to 
describe to you the beauties of Summit, the pass 
through the Rockies, this vision of heavenly beauty, 
this wonder of wonders. 

But I can take you closer to my heart and tell 
you the inspiration of that hour ; it was one of con- 
secration and trust, that wherever my path leads me, 
though it might not be one I should have chosen, 
there will I go, and trust that the Father who brought 
me to this beautiful world, will be the same Dear 
Father who will take my hand when I cross the ferry 
called Death to my eternal home. 

I. E. Davis. 



